A 

StraiqktDeal 

or 

TheAncient 
Grudge 



9> 



Peace and friendship wiih all mankind 
is our "Wisest policy, and I wish we may 
he permitted to pursue it 

Thomasjefferson 

Owen 
Wisier 




Class 

Book 

BEQUEST OF ; 
ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 

OB 

THE ANCIENT GKUDGE 




THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 



THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd, 

TORONTO 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 

OR 

THE ANCIENT GRUDGE 



BY 

OWEN WISTER 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1921 

AU rights re9«rved 



CJOPTBIGHT, 1920, 

bt the macmillan company. 



Set np and electrotyped. Published March, zgao. 



Bl>QU©8t 

Albert Adait Clemons 
Aug. 24, lOSa 
(Not available for ©soiLaag©) 



J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith C3o. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO 

EDWARD AND ANNA MARTIN 

WHO GIVE HELP IN TIME OF 
TROUBLE 



CONTENTS 

OHAFTBB PAGE 

I. CONCEKNING One's LeTTER BoX ... 1 

II. What the Postman Brought . . . 5 

HI. In Front of a Bulletin Board ... 29 

IV. "My Army of Spies" 39 

V. The Ancient Grudge 53 

VI. Who Is Without Sin? 59 

VII. Tarred with the Same Stick . . .71 

VIII. History Astigmatic 83 

EX. Concerning a Complex .... 97 

X. Jackstraws 105 

XI. Some Familt Scraps 121 

XII. On the Ragged Edge 139 

XIII. Benefits Forgot 173 

XIV. England the Slacker! .... 183 
XV. Rude Britannia, Crude Columbia . . 203 

XVI. An International Imposture . . . 253 

XVII. Paint 267 

XVEII. The Will to Friendship — ob the Will to 

Hate? 275 

XIX. Lion and Cub 283 

vii 



CHAPTER I 
CONCERNING ONE'S . LETTER BOX 



\ 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 

OR, 

THE ANCIENT GRUDGE 

CHAPTER I 

CONCERNING ONE^S LETTER BOX 

Publish any sort of conviction related to 
these morose days through which we are Uving, 
and letters will shower upon you like leaves in 
October. No matter what your conviction be, 
it will shake both yeas and nays loose from 
various minds where they were hanging ready 
to fall. Never was a time when so many brains 
rustled with hates and panaceas that would 
sail wide into the air at the Ughtest jar. Try 
it and see. Say that you believe in God, or do 
not; say that Democracy is the key to the 
millennium, or the survival of the unfittest ; that 
Labor is worse than the Kaiser, or better; that 
drink is a demon, or that wine ministers to the 

3 



4 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



health and the cheer of man — say what you 
please, and the yeas and nays will pelt you. 
So insecurely do the plainest, oldest truths dangle 
in a mob of disheveled brains, that it is likely, 
did you assert twice two continues to equal four 
and we had best stick to the multiplication table, 
anonymous letters would come to you full of 
passionate abuse. Thinking comes hard to all 
of us. To some it never comes at all, because 
their heads lack the machinery. How many of 
such are there among us, and how can we find 
them out before they do us harm? Science has 
a test for this. It has been applied to the army 
recruit, but to the civilian voter not yet. The 
voting moron still runs amuck in our Democracy. 
Our native American air is infected with aUen 
breath. It is so thick with opinions that the 
light is obscured. Will the sane ones eventually 
prevail and heal the sick atmosphere? We 
must at least assume so. Else, how could we 
go on? 



CHAPTER II 
WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 

During the winter of 1915 I came to think 
that Germany had gone dangerously but method- 
ically mad, and that the European War vitally 
concerned ourselves. This conviction I put in 
a book. Yeas and nays pelted me. Time seems 
to show the yeas had it. 

During May, 1918, I thought we made a mis- 
take to hate England. I said so at the earliest 
opportunity. Again came the yeas and nays. 
You shall see some of these. They are of help. 
Time has not settled this question. It is as 
alive as ever — more alive than ever. What 
if the Armistice was premature? What if Ger- 
many absorb Russia and join Japan? What if 
the League of Nations break like a toy? 

Yeas and nays are put here without the con- 
sent of their writers, whose names, of course, do 
not appear, and who, should they ever see this, 
are begged to take no offense. None is intended. 

7 



8 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



There is no intention except to persuade, if 
possible, a few readers, at least, that hatred of 
England is not wise, is not justified to-day, and 
has never been more than partly justified. It 
is based upon three foundations fairly distinct 
yet meeting and merging on occasions : first 
and worst, our school histories of the Revolution ; 
second, certain policies and actions of England 
since then, generally distorted or falsified by 
our poUticians ; and lastly certain national traits 
in each country that the other does not share 
and which have hitherto produced perennial 
personal friction between thousands of EngUsh 
and American individuals of every station in 
life. These shall in due time be illustrated by 
two sets of anecdotes : one, disclosing the Eng- 
lish traits, the other the American. I say Eng- 
lish, and not British, advisedly, because both 
the Scotch and the Irish seem to be without 
those traits which especially grate upon us and 
upon which we especially grate. And now for 
the letters. 

The first is from a soldier, an enlisted man, 
writing from France. 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 9 



"Allow me to thank you for your article en- 
titled ^The Ancient Grudge.' . . . Like many 
other young Americans there was instilled in 
me from early childhood a feeling of resentment 
against our democratic cousins across the At- 
lantic and I was only too ready to accept as 
true those stories I heard of England shirking 
her duty and hiding behind her colonies, etc. It 
was not until I came over here and saw what she 
was really doing that my opinion began to change. 

''When first my division arrived in France it 
was brigaded with and received its initial ex- 
perience with the British, who proved to us 
how httle we really knew of the war as it was 
and that we had yet much to learn. Soon my 
opinion began to change and I was regarding 
England as the backbone of the Allies. Yet 
there remained a certain something I could not 
forgive them. What it was you know, and 
have proved to me that it is not our place to 
judge and that we have much for which to be 
thankful to our great Ally. 

''Assuring you that your . . . article has suc- 
ceeded in converting one who needed conversion 
badly I beg to remain. . . 



10 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



How many American soldiers in Europe, I 
wonder, have looked about them, have used 
their sensible independent American brains (our 
very best characteristic), have left school his- 
tories and hearsay behind them and judged the 
English for themselves? A good many, it is 
to be hoped. What that judgment finally be- 
comes must depend not alone upon the personal 
experience of each man. It must also come 
from that hberality of outlook which is attained 
only by getting outside your own place and see- 
ing a lot of customs and people that differ from 
your own. A mind thus seasoned and balanced 
no longer leaps to an opinion about a whole 
nation from the sporadic conduct of individual 
members of it. It is to be feared that some of 
our soldiers may never forget or make allowance 
for a certain insult they received in the streets 
of London. But of this later. The following 
sentence is from a letter written by an American 
sailor : 

'^I have read . . . ^The Ancient Grudge' and 
I wish it could be read by every man on our big 
ship as I know it would change a lot of their 
attitude toward England. I have argued with 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 11 



lots of th^m and have shown some of them where 
they are wrong but the Cathohcs and descendants 
of Ireland have a different argument and as my 
education isn't very great, I know very Uttle 
about what England did to the Cathohcs in 
Ireland." 

Ireland I shall discuss later. Ireland is no 
more our business to-day than the South was 
England's business in 1861. That the Irish 
question should defeat an understanding be- 
tween ourselves and England would be, to 
quote what a gentleman who is at once a loyal 
Catholic and a loyal member of the British 
Government said to me, wrecking the ship 
for a ha'pennyworth of tar." 

The following is selected from the nays, and 
was written by a business man. I must not 
omit to say that the writers of all these letters 
are strangers to me. 

'^As one American citizen to another . . . 
permit me to give my personal view on your 
subject of ^The Ancient Grudge' . . . 

'^To begin with, I think that you start with 
a false idea of our kinship — with the idea that 
America, because she speaks the language of 



12 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



England, because our laws and customs are to 
a great extent of the same origin, because much 
that is good among us came from there also, 
is essentially of English character, bound up 
in some way with the success or failure of Eng- 
land. 

'^Nothing, in my opinion, could be further 
from the truth. We are a distinctive race — no 
more Enghsh, nationally, than the present King 
George is German — as closely related and as 
alike as a celluloid comb and a stick of dyna- 
mite. 

'^We are bound up in the success of America 
only. The English are bound up in the success 
of England only. We are as friendly as rival 
corporations. We can unite in a common cause, 
as we have, but, once that is over, we will go 
our own way — which way, owing to the in- 
crease of our shipping and foreign trade, is 
likely to become more and more antagonistic 
to England's. 

'^England has been a commercially unscrupu- 
lous nation for generations and it is idle to throw 
the blame for this or that act of a nation on an 
individual. Such arguments might be kept up 



WHAT THE. POSTMAN BROUGHT 13 



indefinitely as regards an act of any country. 
A responsible nation must bear the praise or 
odium that attaches to any national action. If 
England has experienced a change of heart it 
has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic 
— as wanton a steal as Belgium, with even less 
excuse, and attended with sufficient brutality 
for all practical purposes. . . . 

^^She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously 
and not a single good turn that was not dictated 
by selfish policy or jealousy of others. She has 
shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping 
and unscrupulous. She is no worse than the 
others probably — possibly even better — but 
it would be doing our country an ill turn to per- 
suade its citizens that England was anything 
less than an active, dangerous, competitor, es- 
pecially in the infancy of our foreign trade. 
When a business rival gives you the glad hand 
and asks fondly after the children, beware lest 
the ensuing emotions cost you money. 

''No : our distrust for England has not its life 
and being in pernicious textbooks. To really 
beheve that would be an insult to our intelli- 
gence — even grudges cannot live without real 



14 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



food. Should England become helpless to- 
morrow, our animosity and distrust would die 
to-morrow, because we would know that she had 
it no longer in her power to injure us. Therein lies 
the feeling — the textbooks merely echo it. . . . 

"In my opinion, a navy somewhat larger 
than England's would practically eliminate from 
America that ^Ancient Grudge' you deplore. 
It is England's navy — her boasted and actual 
control of the seas — which threatens and irri- 
tates every nation on the face of the globe that 
has maritime aspirations. She may use it with 
discretion, as she has for years. It may even 
be at times a source of protection to others, as 
it has — but so long as it exists as a supreme 
power it is a constant source of danger and food 
for grudges. 

"We will never be a free nation until our 
navy surpasses England's. The world will never 
be a free world until the seas and trade routes are 
free to all, at all times, and without any menace, 
however benevolent. 

"In conclusion . . . allow me to again state 
that I write as one American citizen to another 
with not the slightest desire to say anything that 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 15 



may be personally obnoxious. My own an- 
cestors were from England. My personal re- 
lations with the Englishmen I have met have 
been very pleasant. I can readily believe that 
there are no better people living, but I feel so 
strongly on the subject, nationally — so bitterly 
opposed to a continuance of England's sea con- 
trol — so fearful that our people may be lulled 
into a feeling of false security, that I cannot 
help trying to combat, with every small means 
in my power, anything that seems to propagate 
a dangerous friendship." 

I received no dissenting letter superior to this. 
To the writer of it I replied that I agreed with 
much that he said, but that even so it did not 
in my opinion outweigh the reasons I had given 
(and shall now give more abundantly) in favor 
of dropping our hostile feeling toward England. 

My correspondent says that we differ as a race 
from the English as much as a celluloid comb 
from a stick of dynamite. Did our soldiers find 
the difference as great as that? I doubt if our 
difference from anybody is quite as great as 
that. Again, my correspondent says that we 
are bound up in our own success only, and Eng- 



16 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



land is bound up in hers only. I agree. But 
suppose the two successes succeed better through 
friendship than through enmity? We are as 
friendly, my correspondent says, as two rival 
corporations. Again I agree. Has it not been 
proved this long while that competing corpora- 
tions prosper through friendship? Did not the 
Northern Pacific and the Great Northern form 
a combination called the Northern Securities, 
for the sake of mutual benefit? Under the 
Sherman Act the Northern Securities was dis- 
solved; but no Sherman act forbids a Liberty 
Securities. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, 
is England's gift to the modern world. Liberty, 
defined and assured by Law, is the central pur- 
pose of our Constitution. Just as identically as 
the Northern Pacific and Great Northern run 
from St. Paul to Seattle do England and the 
United States aim at Liberty, defined and assured 
by Law. As friends, the two nations can swing 
the world towards world stability. My cor- 
respondent would hardly have instanced the 
Boers in his reference to England's misdeeds, 
had he reflected upon the part the Boers have 
played in England's struggle with Germany. 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 17 



I will point out no more of the latent weak- 
nesses that underlie various passages in this 
letter, but proceed to the remaining letters that 
I have selected. I gave one from an enlisted 
man and one from a sailor; this is from a 
commissioned officer, in France. 

'^I cannot refrain from sending you a line of 
appreciation and thanks for giving the people 
at home a few facts that I am sure some do not 
know and throwing a light upon a much dis- 
cussed topic, which I am sure will help to remove 
from some of their minds a foolish bigoted an- 
tipathy." 

Upon the single point of our school histories 
of the Revolution, some of which I had named 
as being guilty of distorting the facts, a cor- 
respondent writes from Nebraska : 

*^Some months ago . . . the question came to 
me, what about our Montgomery's History 
now. ... I find that everywhere it is the 
King who is represented as taking these measures 
against the American people. On page 134 is 
the heading, American Commerce; the new King, 
George III ; how he interfered with trade; page 
135, The King proposes to tax the Colonies; page 
c 



18 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



136, 'The best men in Parliament — such men 
as William Pitt and Edmund Burke — took the 
side of the colonies/ On page 138, 'William 
Pitt said in Parliament, '4n my opinion, this 
kingdom has no right to lay a tax on the col- 
onies ... I rejoice that America has re- 
sisted page 150, 'The English people would 
not volunteer to fight the Americans and 
the King had to hire nearly 30,000 Hessians 
to help do the work. . . . The Americans had 
not sought separation ; the King — not the 
English people — had forced it on them. . . 

"I am writing this . . . because, as I was 
glad to see, you did not mince words in naming 
several of the worse offenders." (He means 
certain school histories that I mentioned and 
shall mention later again.) 

An official from Pittsburgh wrote thus: 
"In common with many other people, I have 
had the same idea that England was not doing 
all she could in the war, that while her colonies 
were in the thick of it, she, herself, seemed to 
be sparing herself, but after reading this article 
... I will frankly and candidly confess to you 
that it has changed my opinion, made me a 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 19 

strong supporter of England, and above all 
made me a better American.'^ 
From Massachusetts : 

^^It is well to remind your readers of the errors 
— or worse — in American school text books 
and to recount Britain's achievements in the 
present war. But of what practical avail are 
these things when a man so highly placed as the 
present Secretary of the Navy asks a Boston 
audience (Tremont Temple, October 30, 1918) 
to believe that it was the American navy which 
made possible the transportation of over 
2,000,000 Americans to France without the loss 
of a single transport on the way over? Did he 
not know that the greater part of those troops 
were not only transported, but convoyed, by 
British vessels, largely withdrawn for that pur- 
pose from such vital service as the supply of 
food to Britain's civil population?" 

The omission on the part of our Secretary of 
the Navy was later quietly rectified by an official 
publication of the British Government, wherein 
it appeared that some sixty per cent of our troops 
were transported in British ships. Our Secre- 
tary's regrettable slight to our British allies was 



20 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



immediately set right by Admiral Sims, who 
forthwith, both in pubhc and in private, paid 
full and appreciative tribute to what had been 
done. It is, nevertheless, very hkely that some 
Americans will learn here for the first time that 
more than half of our troops were not transported 
by ourselves, and could not have been trans- 
ported at all but for British assistance. There 
are many persons who still believe what our 
pohticians and newspapers tell them. No in- 
cident that I shall relate fm'ther on serves better 
to point the chief international moral at which 
I am driving throughout these pages, and at 
which I have already hinted v Never to general- 
ize the character of a whole nation by the acts 
of individual members of it. That is what 
everybody does, ourselves, the English, the 
French, everybody. You can form no valid 
opinion of any nation's characteristics, not even 
your own, until you have met hundreds of its 
people, men and wc«nen, and had ample oppor- 
tunity to observe and know them beneath the 
surface. Here on the one hand we had our 
Secretary of the Navy. He gave our Navy the 
whole credit for getting our soldiers overseas. 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 21 

He justified the British opinion that we are a 
nation of braggarts. On the other hand, in 
London, we had Admiral Sims, another Amer- 
ican, a splendid antidote. He corrected the 
Secretary's brag. What is the moral? Look 
out how you generalize. Since we entered the 
war that tribe of English has increased who judge 
us with an open mind, discriminate between us, 
draw close to a just appraisal of our qualities 
and defects, and possibly even discern that 
those who fill our public positions are mostly 
on a lower level than those who elect them. 

I proceed with two more letters, both dissent- 
ing, and both giving very typically, as it seems 
to me, the American feeling about England — 
partially justified by instances mentioned by 
my correspondent, but equally mentioned by 
me in passages which he seems to have skipped. 

Lately I read and did not admire your article 
. . . 'The Ancient Grudge.' Many of your 
statements are absolutely tjrue, and I recognize 
the fact that England's help in this war has been 
invaluable. Let it go at that and hush! 

''I do not defend our own Indian policy. . . . 
Wounded and disabled in our Indian wars . . . 



22 



A STKAIGHT DEAL 



I know all about them and how indefensible they 
are 

'^England has been always our only legitimate 
enemy. 1776? Yes, call it ancient history and 
forget it if possible. 1812? That may go in 
the same category. But the causes of that mis- 
understanding were identically repeated in 1914 
and '15. 

'^1861? Is that also ancient? Perhaps — but 
very bitter in the memory of many of us now 
living. The Alabama. The Confederate Com- 
missioners (I know you will say we were wrong 
there — and so we may have been technically 
— but John Bull bullied us into compliance 
when our hands were tied). Lincoln told his 
Cabinet ^one war at a time, Gentlemen' and 
submitted. ... 

"In 1898 we were a strong and powerful nation 
and a dangerous enemy to provoke. England 
recognized the fact and acted accordingly. Eng- 
land entered the present war to protect small 
nations! Heaven save the mark! You surely 
read your history. Pray tell me something of 
England's policy in South Africa, India, the 
Soudan, Persia, Abyssinia, Ireland, Egypt. The 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 23 

lost provinces of Denmark. The United States 
when she was young and helpless. And thus, 
almost to infinitum. 

''Do you not know that the foundations of 
ninety per cent of the great British fortunes 
came from the loot of India? upheld and fostered 
by the great and unscrupulous East India Com- 
pany? 

''Come down to later times: to-day for in- 
stance. Here in California ... I meet and 
associate with hundreds of Britishers. Are they 
American citizens? I had almost said, 'A^'o, 
not one.' Sneering and contemptuous of 
America and American institutions. Continually 
finding fault with our government and our people. 
Comparing these things with England, always to 
our disadvantage 

"Now do you wonder we do not like England? 
Am I pro-German? I should laugh and so 
would you if you knew me.'' 

To this correspondent I did not reply that I 
wished I knew him — which I do — that, even 
as he, so I had frequently been galled by the 
rudeness and the patronizing of various speci- 
mens, high and low, of the EngUsh race. But 



24 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



something I did reply, to the effect that I 
asked nobody to consider England flawless, or 
any nation a charitable institution, but merely 
to be fair, and to consider a cordial understand- 
ing between us greatly to our future advantage. 
To this he answered, in part, as follows : 

''I wish to thank you for your kindly 
reply. . . . Your argument is that as a matter 
of policy we should conciliate Great Britain. 
Have we fallen so low, this great and powerful 
nation? . . . Truckling to some other power 
because its backing, moral or physical, may 
some day be of use to us, even tho' we know 
that in so doing we are surrendering our dearest 
rights, principles, and dignity! ... Oh! my 
dear Sir, you surely do not advocate this? I 
inclose an editorial clipping. ... Is it no 
shock to you when Winston Churchill shouts 
to High Heaven that under no circumstances 
will Great Britain surrender its supreme control 
of the seas? This in reply to President Wilson^s 
plea for freedom of the seas and curtailment of 
armaments. . . . But as you see, our President 
and our Mr. Daniels have already said, ^Very 
well, we will outbuild you.' Never again shall 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 25 



Great Britain stop our mail ships and search our 
private mails. Already has England declared an 
embargo against our exports in many essential 
lines and already are we expressing our dissatis- 
faction and taking means to retaliate " 

Of the editorial clipping inclosed with the 
above, the following is a part : 

'^John Bull is our associate in the contest with 
the Kaiser. There is no doubt as to his position 
on that proposition. He went after the Dutch 
in great shape. Next to France he led the way 
and said, 'Come on, Yanks; we need your help. 
We will put you in the first line of trenches where 
there will be good gunning. Yes, we will do all 
of that and at the same time we will borrow your 
money, raised by Liberty Loans, and use it for 
the purchase of American wheat, pork, and 
beef.' 

''Mr. Bull kept his word. He never flinched 
or attempted to dodge the issue. He kept strictly 
in the middle of the road. His determination to 
down the Kaiser with American men, American 
money, and American food never abated for a 
single day during the conflict," 

This editorial has many twins throughout the 



26 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



country. I quote it for its value as a specimen 
of that sort of journalistic and political utterance 
amongst us, which is as seriously embarrassed by 
facts as a skunk by its tail. Had its author 
said: ''The Declaration of Independence was 
signed by Christopher Columbus on Washing- 
ton's birthday during the siege of Vicksburg in 
the presence of Queen Ehzabeth and Judas 
Iscariot/' his statement would have been equally 
veracious, and more striking. 

As to Winston Churchill's declaration that 
Great Britain will not surrender her control 
of the seas, I am as httle shocked by that 
as I should be were our Secretary of the 
Navy to declare that in no circumstances would 
we give up control of the Panama Canal. The 
Panama Canal is our carotid artery, Great 
Britain's navy is her jugular vein. It is her 
jugular vein in the mind of her people, regardless 
of that new apparition, the submarine. I was 
not shocked that Great Britain should dechne 
Mr. Wilson's invitation that she cut her jugular 
vein ; it was the invitation which kindled my 
emotions; but these were of a less serious 
kind. 



WHAT THE POSTMAN BROUGHT 27 

The last letter that I shall give is from an 
American citizen of English birth. 

'^As a boy at school in England, I was taught 
the history of the American Revolution as J. R. 
Green presents it in his Short History of the English 
People. The gist of this record, as you doubtless 
recollect, is that George III being engaged in the 
attempt to destroy what there then was of po- 
htical freedom and representative government in 
England, used the American situation as a means 
to that end; that the Enghsh people, in so far 
as their voice could make itseK heard, were soHdly 
against both his Enghsh and American poUcy, 
and that the triumph of America contributed in 
no small measure to the salvation of those in- 
stitutions by which the evolution of England 
towards complete democracy was made possible. 
Washington was held up to us in England not 
merely as a great and good man, but as an heroic 
leader, to whose courage and wisdom the Enghsh 
as well as the American people were eternally 
indebted 

*^Pray forgive so long a letter from a stranger. 
It is prompted ... by a sense of the ilUmitable 
importance, not only for America and Britain, 



28 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



but for the entire world, of these two great demo- 
cratic peoples knowing each other as they really 
are and cooperating as only they can cooperate 
to establish and maintain peace on just and 
permanent foundations." 



CHAPTER III 
IN FRONT OF A BULLETIN BOARD 



CHAPTER III 



IN FRONT OF A BULLETIN BOARD 

There, then, are ten letters of the fifty which 
came to me in consequence of what I wrote in 
May, 1918, which was pubHshed in the American 
Magazine for the following November. Ten will 
do. To read the other forty would change no 
impression conveyed already by the ten, but 
would merely repeat it. With varying phrase- 
ology their writers either think we have hitherto 
misjudged England and that ^ly facts are to the 
point, or they express the stereotyped American 
antipathy to England and treat my facts as we 
mortals mostly do when facts are embarrassing 
— side-step them. What best pleased me was 
to find that soldiers and sailors agreed with me, 
and not " high-brows " only. 

May, 1918, as you will remember, was a very 
dark hour. We had come into the war, had been 
in for a year; but events had not yet taken us 

31 



32 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



out of the well-nigh total echpse flung upon our 
character by those blighting words, 'Hhere is 
such a thing as being too proud to fight." The 
British had been told by their General that they 
were fighting with their backs to the wall. Since 
March 23d the tread of the Hun had been com- 
ing steadily nearer to Paris. Belleau Wood 
and Chateau-Thierry had not yet struck the 
true ring from our metal and put into the hands 
of Foch the one further weapon that he needed. 
French moral was burning very low and blue. 
Yet even in such an hour, people apparently 
American and apparently grown up, were talk- 
ing against England, our ally. Then and there- 
after, even as to-day, they talked against her 
as they had been talking since August, 1914, as 
I had heard them again and again, indoors and 
out, as I heard a man one forenoon in a crowd 
during the earlier years of the war, the miserable 
years before we waked from our trance of neu- 
trality, while our chosen leaders were still mis- 
leading us. 

Do you remember those unearthly years? 
The explosions, the plots, the spies, the Lusi- 
tania, the notes, Mr. Bryan, von Bernstorff^ 



IN FRONT OF A BULLETIN BOARD 33 



half our country — oh, more than half! — m- 
different or incredulous, nothing prepared, nothing 
done, no step taken, Theodore Roosevelt's and 
Leonard Wood's almost the only voices warning 
us what was bound to happen, and to get ready 
for it? Do you remember the bulletin boards? 
Did you grow, as I did, so restless that you would 
step out of your office to see if anything new had 
happened during the last sixty minutes — would 
stop as you went to lunch and stop as you came 
back? We knew from the faces of our friends 
what our own faces were like. In company we 
pumped up liveliness, but in the street, alone 
with our apprehensions — do you remember ? 
For our future's sake may everybody remember, 
may nobody forget ! 

What the news was upon a certain forenoon 
memorable to me, I do not recall, and this is of 
no consequence ; good or bad, the stream of by- 
passers clotted thickly to read it as the man 
chalked it line upon line across the bulletin 
board. Citizens who were in haste stepped 
off the curb to pass round since they could not 
pass through this crowd of gazers. Thus on the 
sidewalk stood some fifty of us, staring at names 

D 



34 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



we had never known until a little while ago, 
B^thincourt, Malancourt, perhaps, or Mont- 
faucon, or Roisel ; French names of small places, 
among whose crumbled, featureless dust I have 
walked since, where hved peacefully a few hun- 
dred or a few thousand that are now a thousand 
butchered or broken-hearted. Through me ran 
once again the wonder that had often chilled 
me since the abdication of the Czar which made 
certain the crumbhng of Russia : after France, 
was our turn coming? Should our fields, too, 
be sown with bones, should our little towns 
among the orchards and the com fall in ashes 
amongst which broken hearts would wander in 
search of some sm^i^ing stick of property? I 
had learned to know that a long while before the 
war the eyes of the Hun, the bird of prey, had 
been fixed upon us as a juicy morsel. He had 
written it, he had said it. Since August, 1914, 
these Pan-German schemes had been leaking 
out for all who chose to understand them. A 
great many did not so choose. The Hun had 
wanted us and planned to get us, and now more 
than ever before, because he intended that we 
should pay his war bills. Let him once get by 



IN FRONT OF A BULLETIN BOARD 35 

England, and his sword would cut through our 
fat, defenseless carcass like a knife through 
cheese. 

A voice arrested my reverie, a voice close by 
in the crowd. It said, ^^Well, I like the French. 
But I'll not cry much if England gets hers. 
What's England done in this war, anyway?" 

"Her fleet's keeping the Kaiser out of your 
front yard, for one thing," retorted another voice. 

With assurance slightly wobbling and a touch 
of the nasal whine, the first speaker protested, 
"Well, look what George III done to us. Bad 
as any Kaiser." 

"Aw, get your facts straight!" It was said 
with scornful force. "Don't you know George III 
was a German ? Don't you know it was Hessians 

— they're Germans — he hired to come over here 
and kill Americans and do his dirty work for him ? 
And his Germans did the same dirty work the 
Kaiser's are doing now. We've got a letter 
written after the battle of Long Island by a mem- 
ber of our family they took prisoner there. And 
they stripped him and they stole his things and 
they beat him down with the butts of their guns 

— after he had surrendered, mind — when he 



36 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



was surrendered and naked, and when he was 
down they beat him some more. That's Ger- 
mans for you. Only they've been getting worse 
while the rest of the world's been getting better. 
Get your facts straight, man." 

A number of us were now listening to this, 
and I envied the historian his ingenious prompt- 
ness — I have none — and I hoped for more of 
this timely debate. But debate was over. The 
anti-Englishman faded to silence. Either he 
was out of facts to get straight, or lacked what 
is so pithily termed come-back." The latter, 
I incline to think ; for come-back needs no facts, 
it is a self-feeder, and its entire absence in the 
anti-Enghshman looks as if he had been a German. 
Germans do not come back when it goes against 
them, they bleat ^^Kamerad!" — or disappear. 
Perhaps this man was a spy — a poor one, to be 
sure — yet doing his best for his Kaiser : slink- 
ing about, peeping, Hstening, trying to wedge the 
Alhes apart, doing his Httle bit towards making 
friends enemies, just as his breed has worked to 
set enmity between ourselves and Japan, our- 
selves and Mexico, France and England, France 
and Italy, England and Russia, between every- 



IN FRONT OF A BULLETIN BOARD 37 



body and everybody else all the world over, in 
the sacred name and for the sacred sake of the 
Kaiser. Thus has his breed, since we occupied 
Coblenz, run to the French soldiers with lies 
about us and then run to us with lies about the 
French soldiers, overlooking in its providential 
stupidity the fact that we and the French would 
inevitably compare notes. Thus too is his breed, 
at the moment I write these words, infesting 
and poisoning the earth with a propaganda that 
remains as coherent and as systematically directed 
as ever it was before the papers began to assure 
us that there was nothing left of the Hohen- 
zoUern government. 



CHAPTER IV 
"MY ARMY OF SPIES" 



CHAPTER IV 



" MY ARMY OF SPIES 

"You will desire to know/' said the Kaiser to 
his council at Potsdam in June, 1908, after the 
successful testing of the first Zeppelin, ^'how 
the hostilities will be brought about. My army 
of spies scattered over Great Britain and France, 
as it is over North and South America, will take 
good care of that. Even now I rule supreme in 
the United States, where three million voters do 
my bidding at the Presidential elections." 

Yes, they did his bidding ; there, and elsewhere 
too. They did it at other elections as well. Do 
you remember the mayor they tried to elect in 
Chicago ? and certain members of Congress ? and 
certain manufacturers and bankers? They did 
his bidding in our newspapers, our public schools, 
and from the pulpit. Certain localities in one 
of the river counties of Iowa (for instance) were 
spots of German treason to the United States. 
The exchange professors" that came from Berlin 

41 



42 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



to Harvard and other universities were so many 
camouflaged spies. Certain prominent American 
citizens, dined and wined and flattered by the 
Kaiser for his purpose, women as well as men, 
came back here mere Kaiser-puppets, hypnotized 
by royalty. His bidding was done in as many 
ways as would fill a book. Shopkeepers did it, 
servants did it, Americans among us were deco- 
rated by him for doing it. Even after the Armis- 
tice, a school textbook ^^got by" the Board of 
Education in a western state, wherein our boys 
and girls were to be taught a German version — 
a Kaiser version — of Germany. Somebody pro- 
tested, and the board explained that it '^hadn't 
noticed," and the book was held up. 

We cannot, I fear, order the school histories in 
Germany to be edited by the Allies. German 
school children will grow up believing, in all prob- 
ability, that bombs were dropped near Ntirnberg 
in July, 1914, that German soil was invaded, that 
the Fatherland fought a war of defense ; they will 
certainly be nourished by hes in the future as 
they were nourished by Hes in the past. But 
we can prevent Germans or pro-Germans writing 
our own school histories; we can prevent that 



MY ARMY OF SPIES^' 



43 



"army of spies ^' of which the Kaiser boasted to 
his council at Potsdam in June, 1908, from con- 
tinuing its activities among us now and hence- 
forth ; and we can prevent our school textbooks 
from playing into Germany's hand by teaching 
hate of England to our boys and girls. Beside 
the sickening siUiness which still asks, "What 
has England done in the war?'' is a silliness still 
more sickening which says, "Germany is beaten. 
Let us forgive and forget." That is not Chris- 
tianity. There is nothing Christian about it. 
It is merely sentimental slush, sloppy shirking 
of anything that compels national alertness, or 
effort, or self-discipline, or self-denial; a moral 
cowardice that pushes away any fact which dis- 
turbs a shallow, torpid, irresponsible, self-indul- 
gent optimism. 

Our golden age of isolation is over. To at- 
tempt to retiu"n to it would be a mere per- 
nicious day-dream. To hark back to Washing- 
ton's warning against entangling alliances is as 
sensible as to go by a map of the world made 
in 1796. We are coupled to the company of 
nations like a car in the middle of a train, only 
more inevitably and permanently, for we cannot 



44 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



uncouple ; and if we tried to do so, we might not 
wreck the train, but we should assuredly wreck 
ourselves. I think the war has brought us one 
benefit certainly : that many young men return 
from Europe knowing this, who had no idea of 
it before they went, and who know also that 
Germany is at heart an untamed, unchanged 
wild beast, never to be trusted again. We must 
not, and shall not, boycott her in trade ; but let 
us not go to sleep at the switch ! Just as 
busily as she is baking pottery opposite Coblenz, 
labelled ^'made in St. Louis," ^^made in Kansas 
City," her ''army of spies" is at work here and 
everjnvhere to undermine those nations who 
have for the moment delayed her plans for world 
dominion. I think the nimaber of Americans 
who know this has increased ; but no American, 
wherever he hves, need travel far from home to 
meet fellow Americans who sing the song of slush 
about forgiving and forgetting. 

Perhaps the man I heard talking in front of 
the bulletin board was one of the ''army of 
spies," as I hke to infer from his absence of 
'' come-back." But perhaps he was merely an 
innocent American who at school had studied, 



MY ARMY OF SPIES 



45 



for instance, Eggleston^s history ; thoughtless — 
but by no means harmless ; for his school-taught 
slant against England, in the days we were 
hving through then, amounted to a slant" for 
Germany. He would be sorry if Germany beat 
France, but not if she beat England — when 
France and England were joined in keeping the 
wolf not only from their door but from ours ! 
It matters not in the least that they were fighting 
our battle, not because they wanted to, but be- 
cause they couldn't help it : they were fighting it 
just the same. That they were compelled doesn't 
matter, any more than it matters that in going 
to war when Belgium was invaded, England's duty 
and England's self-interest happened to coincide. 
Our duty and our interest also coincided when 
we entered the war and joined England and 
France. Have we seemed to think that this 
diminished our glory? Have they seemed to 
think that it absolved them from gratitude ? 

Such talk as that man's in front of the bulletin 
board helped Germany then, whether he meant 
to or not, just as much as if a spy had said it — 
just as much as similar talk against England 
to-day, whether by spies or unheeding Americans, 



46 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



helps the Germany of to-morrow. The Germany 
of yesterday had her spies all over France and 
Italy, busily suggesting to rustic uninformed peas- 
ants that we had gone to France for conquest 
of France, and intended to keep some of her land. 
What is she telHng them now? I don't know. 
Something to her advantage and their disad- 
vantage, you may be sure, just as she is busy 
suggesting to us things to her advantage and 
our disadvantage — jealousy and fear of the 
British navy, or pro-German school histories for 
our children, or that we can't make dyes, or 
whatever you please : the only sure thing is, that 
the Germany of yesterday is the Germany of 
to-morrow. She is not changed. She will not 
change. The steady stream of her propaganda 
all over the world proves it. No matter how 
often her masquerading government changes 
costumes, that costume is merely her device to 
conceal the same cunning, treacherous wild 
beast that in 1914, after forty years of prepara- 
tion, sprang at the throat of the world. Of all 
the nations in the late war, she alone is pulling 
herself together. She is hard at work. She 
means to spring again just as soon as she can. 



"MY ARMY OF SPIES 



47 



Did you read the letter written in April of 
1919 by her Vice-Chancellor, Mathias Erzberger, 
also her minister of finance? A very able, com- 
pact masterpiece of malignant voracity, good 
enough to do credit to Satan. Through that lucky 
flaw of stupidity which runs through apparently 
every German brain, and to which we chiefly 
owe our victory and temporary respite from the 
fangs of the wolf, Mathias Erzberger posted his 
letter. It went wrong in the mails. If you de- 
sire to read the whole of it, the International 
News Bureau can either furnish it or put you on 
the track of it. One sentence from it shall be 
quoted here : 

^'We will undertake the restoration of Russia, 
and in possession of such support will be ready, 
within ten or fifteen years, to bring France, with- 
out any difficulty, into our power. The march 
towards Paris will be easier than in 1914. The 
last step but one towards the world dominion 
will then be reached. The continent is ours. 
Afterwards will follow the last stage, the closing 
struggle, between the continent and the over- 
seas." 

Who is meant by '^overseas"? Is there left 



48 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



any honest American brain so fond and so 
feeble as to suppose that we are not included 
in that highly suggestive and significant term? 
I fear that some such brains are left. 

Germans remain German. I was talking with 
an American officer just returned from Coblenz. 
He described the surprise of the Germans when 
they saw our troops march in to occupy that 
region of their country. They said to him : 
'^But this is extraordinary. Where do these 
soldiers of yours come from? You have only 
150,000 troops in Europe. All the other trans- 
ports were sunk by our submarines." ^'We have 
two million troops in Europe/' rephed the officer, 
'^and lost by explosion a very few hundred. No 
transport was sunk." ^'B'ut that is impossible," 
returned the burgher, '^we know from our Gov- 
ernment at Berhn that you have only 150,000 
troops in Europe." 

Germans remain German. At Coblenz they 
were servile, cringing, fawning, ready to hck the 
boots of the Americans, loading them with offers 
of every food and drink and joy they had. Thus 
they began. Soon, finding that the Americans 
did not cut their throats, burn their houses, rape 



MY ARMY OF SPIES" 



49 



their daughters, or bayonet their babies, but 
were quiet, civil, disciplined, and apparently harm- 
less, they changed. Their fawning faded away, 
they scowled and muttered. One day the Burgo- 
master at a certain place repUed to some ordinary 
requisitions with an arrogant refusal. It was 
quite out of the question, he said, to comply 
with any such ridiculous demands. Then the 
Americans ceased to seem harmless. Certain 
steps were taken by the commanding officer, some 
leading citizens were collected and enUghtened 
through the only channel whereby hght pene- 
trates a German skull. Thus, by a very sUght 
taste of the methods by which they thought 
they would cow the rest of the world, these 
burghers were cowed instantly. They had 
thought the Americans afraid of them. They 
had taken civihty for fear. Suddenly they en- 
countered what we call the swift kick. It edu- 
cated them. It always will. Nothing else will. 

Mathias Erzberger will, of course, disclaim 
his letter. He will say it is a forgery. He will 
point to the protestations of German repentance 
and reform with which he sweated during April, 
1919, and throughout the weeks preceding the 

E 



50 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



delivery of the Treaty at Versailles. Perhaps 
he has done this already. All Germans will 
beUeve him — and some Americans. 

The German method, the German madness — 
what a mixture ! The method just grazed making 
Germany owner of the earth, the madness saved 
the earth. With perfect recognition of Bel- 
gium's share, of Russia's share, of France's, 
Italy's, England's, our own, in winning the war, 
I believe that the greatest and most efficient Ally 
of all who contributed to Germany's defeat was 
her own constant blundering madness. Americans 
must never forget either the one or the other, 
and too many are trying to forget both. 

Germans remain German. An American lady 
of my acquaintance was about to cUmb from 
Amalfi to Ravello in company with a German lady 
of her acquaintance. The German lady had a 
German Baedeker, the American a Baedeker in 
English, published several years apart. The 
Baedeker in German recommended a path that 
went straight up the ascent, the Baedeker in 
EngUsh a path that went up more gradually 
around it. '^Mine says this^ is the best way," 
said the American. ^'Mine says straight up 



MY ARMY OF SPIES" 



/ 

51 



is the best/^ said the German. ''But mine is 
a later edition/' said the American. ''That 
is not it/' explained the German. "It is that 
we Germans are so much more clever and agile, 
that to us is recommended the more dangerous 
way while Americans are shown the safe path." 

That happened in 1910. That is Kultur. This 
too is Kultur : 

"If Silesia become Polish 
Then, oh God, may children perish, like beasts, in their 

mothers' womb. 
Then lame their Polish feet and, their hands, oh God! 
Let them be crippled and blind their eyes. 
Smite them with dumbness and madness, both men and 

women." 

From a Hymn of German hate for the Poles. 

Germany remains German ; but when next she 
springs, she will make no blunders. 



/ 



CHAPTER V 
THE ANCIENT GRUDGE 



CHAPTER V 



THE ANCIENT GRUDGE 

It was in Broad Street, Philadelphia, before 
we went to war, that I overheard the foohsh — 
or propagandist — slur upon England in front of 
the bulletin board. After we were fighting by 
England's side for our existence, you might have 
supposed such talk would cease. It did not. 
And after the Armistice, it continued. On the 
day we celebrated as British Day," a man went 
through the crowd in Wanamaker's shop, asking. 
What had England done in the War, anyhow? 
Was he a German, or an Irishman, or an American 
in pay of Berlin? I do not know. But this I 
know: perfectly good Americans still talk like 
that. Cowboys in camp do it. Men and women 
in Eastern cities, persons with at least the external 
trappings of educated intelligence, play into the 
hands of the Germany of to-morrow, do their 
unconscious httle bit of harm to the future of 

55 



56 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



freedom and civilization, by repeating that Eng- 
land "has always been our enemy." Then they 
mention the Revolution, the War of 1812, and 
England's attitude during our Civil War, just as 
they invariably mentioned these things in 1917 
and 1918, when England was our ally in a struggle 
for life, and as they will be mentioning them in 
1940, I presume, if they are still aUve at that 
time. 

Now, the Civil War ended fifty-five years 
ago, the War of 1812 one hundred and five, and 
the Revolution one hundred and thirty-seven. 
Suppose, while the Kaiser was butchering Belgium 
because she barred his way to that dinner he was 
going to eat in Paris in October, 1914, that France 
had said, "England is my hereditary enemy. 
Henry the Fifth and the Duke of Wellington and 
sundry Plantagenets fought me"; and suppose 
England had said, "I don't care much for France. 
Joan of Arc and Napoleon and sundry other 
French fought me" — suppose they had sat 
nursing their ancient grudges like that? Well, 
the Kaiser would have dined in Paris according 
to his plan. And next, according to his plan, 
with the Channel ports taken he would have 



THE ANCIENT GRUDGE 57 

dined in London. And finally, according to his 
plan, and with the help of his '^army of spies" 
overseas, he would have dined in New York and 
the White House. For German madness could 
not have defeated Germany's plan of World 
dominion, if various nations had not got together 
and assisted. Other Americans there are, who 
do not resort to the Revolution for their grudge, 
but are in a commercial rage over this or that : 
wool, for instance. Let such Americans reflect 
that commercial grievances against England can 
be more readily adjusted than an absorption of 
all commerce by Germany can be adjusted. 
Wool and everything else will belong to Mathias 
Erzberger and his breed, if they carry out their 
intention. And the way to insure their carry- 
ing it out is to let them split us and England and 
all their competitors asunder by their ceaseless 
and ingenious propaganda, which plays upon 
every international prejudice, historic, commer- 
cial, or other, which is available. After August, 
1914, England barred the Kaiser's way to New 
York, and in 1917, we found it useful to forget 
about George the Third and the Alabama. In 
1853 Prussia possessed one ship of war — her first. 



58 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



In 1918 her submarines were prowling along our 
coast. For the moment they are no longer there. 
For a while they may not be. But do you think 
Germany intends that scraps of paper shall be 
abolished by any Treaty, even though it contain 
80,000 words and a League of Nations? She 
will make of that Treaty a whole basket of scraps, 
if she can, and as soon as she can. She has said 
so. Her workingmen are at work, industrious 
and content with a quarter the pay for a longer 
day than anywhere else. Let those persons who 
cannot get over George the Third and the Ala- 
bama ponder upon this for a minute or two. 



CHAPTER VI 
WHO IS WITHOUT SIN? 



CHAPTER VI 



WHO IS WITHOUT SIN? 

Much else is there that it were well they should 
ponder, and I am coming to it presently; but 
first, one suggestion. Most of us, if we dig back 
only fifty or sixty or seventy years, can disinter 
various relatives over whose doings we should pre- 
fer to glide Hghtly and in silence. 

Do you mean to say that you have none? 
Nobody stained with any shade of dishonor ? No 
grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-etc. 
grandfather or grandmother who ever made a 
scandal, broke a heart, or betrayed a trust? 
Every man Jack and woman Jill of the lot 
right back to Adam and Eve wholly good, honor- 
able, and courageous? How fortunate to be 
sprung exclusively from the loins of centuries of 
angels — and to know all about them ! Consider 
the hoard of virtue to which you have fallen heir ! 

But you know very well that this is not so; 
that every one of us has every kind of person 

61 



62 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



for an ancestor ; that all sorts of \drtue and \dce, 
of heroism and disgrace, are mingled in our blood ; 
that inevitably amidst the huge herd of our grand- 
sires black sheep as well as white are to be found. 

As it is with men, so it is with nations. Do 
you imagine that any nation has a spotless 
history? Do you think that you can peer into 
our past, turn over the back pages of our record, 
and never come upon a single blot? Indeed 
you cannot. And it is better — a great deal 
better — that you should be aware of these blots. 
Such knowledge may enhghten you, may make 
you a better American. What we need is to 
be critics of ourselves, and this is exactly what 
we have been taught not to be. 

We are quite good enough to look straight at 
ourselves. Owing to one thing and another we 
are cleaner, honester, humaner, and whiter than 
any people on the continent of Eiu"ope. If any 
nation on the continent of Europe has ever be- 
haved with the generosity and magnanimity 
that we have shown to Cuba, I have yet to learn 
of it. They jeered at us about Cuba, did the 
Europeans of the continent. Their papers stuck 
their tongues in their cheeks. Of course our fine 



WHO IS WITHOUT SIN? 



63 



sentiments were all sham, they said. Of course 
we intended to swallow Cuba, and never had 
intended anything else. And when General 
Leonard Wood came away from Cuba, having 
made Havana healthy, having brought order out 
of chaos on the island, and we left Cuba independ- 
ent, Europe jeered on. That dear old Europe ! 

Again, in 1909, it was not any European nation 
that returned to China their share of the in- 
demnity exacted in consequence of the Boxer 
troubles ; we alone returned our share to China — 
sixteen millions. It was we who prevented levy- 
ing a punitive indemnity on China. Read the 
whole story ; there is much more. We played the 
gentleman, Europe played the bully. But Europe 
calls us dollar chasers." That dear old Europe ! 
Again, if any conquering General on the continent 
of Europe ever behaved as Grant did to Lee at 
Appomattox, his name has escaped me. 

Again, and lastly — though I am not attempting 
to tell you here the whole tale of our decencies : 
Whose hands came away cleanest from that Peace 
Conference in Paris lately ? What did we ask for 
ourselves? Everything we asked, save some 
repairs of damage, was for other people. Oh, 



64 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



yes ! we are quite good enough to keep quiet about 
these things. No need whatever to brag. Brag- 
ging, moreover, incHnes the Hstener to suspect 
you're not so remarkable as you sound. 

But all this virtue doesn't in the least alter the 
fact that we're like everybody else in having some 
dirty pages in our History. These pages it is a 
foolish mistake to conceal. I suppose that the 
school histories of every nation are partly bad. 
I imagine that most of them implant the germ of 
international hatred in the boys and girls who 
have to study them. Nations do not like each 
other, never have liked each other; and it may 
very well be that school textbooks help this 
inchnation to dislike. Certainly we know what 
contempt and hatred for other nations the 
Germans have been sedulously taught in their 
schools, and how utterly they believed their 
teaching. How much better and wiser for the 
whole world if all the boys and girls in all the 
schools everywhere were henceforth to be started 
in life with a just and true notion of all flags and 
the peoples over whom they fly ! The League of 
^ Nations might not then rest upon the quicksand 
of distrust and antagonism which it rests upon 



WHO IS WITHOUT SIN? 



65 



to-day. But it is our own school histories that 
are my present concern, and I repeat my opinion — 
or rather my conviction — that the way in which 
they have concealed the truth from us is worse 
than silly, it is harmful. I am not going to take 
up the whole Hst of their misrepresentations, I 
v/ill put but one or two questions to you. 

When you finished school, what idea had you 
about the War of 1812? I will tell you what 
mine was. I thought we had gone to war because 
England was stopping American ships and taking 
American sailors out of them for her own service. 
I could refer to Perry's victory on Lake Erie and 
Jackson's smashing of the British at New Orleans ; 
the name of the frigate Constitution sent thrills 
through me. And we had pounded old John 
Bull and sent him to the right about a second 
time! Such was my glorious idea, and there 
it stopped. Did you know much more than 
that about it when your schooling was done? 
Did you know that our reasons for declaring 
war against Great Britain in 1812 were not so 
strong as they had been three and four years 
earher? That during those years England had 
moderated her arrogance, was ready to moderate 



66 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



further, had placated us for her brutal performance 
concerning the Chesapeake^ wanted peace; while 
we, who had been nearly unanimous for war, and 
with a fuller purse in 1808, were now, by our own 
congressional fuddling and messing, without any 
adequate army, and so divided in counsel that 
only one northern state was wholly in favor of 
war? Did you know that our General Hull be- 
gan by invading Canada from^ Detroit and sur- 
rendered his whole army without firing a shot? 
That the British overran Michigan and parts of 
Ohio, and western New York, while we retreated 
disgracefully ? That though we shone in victories 
of single combat on the sea and showed the EngHsh 
that we too knew how to sail and fight on the 
waves as hardily as Britannia (we won eleven 
out of thirteen of the frigate and sloop actions), 
nevertheless she caught us or blocked us up, and 
rioted unchecked along our coasts ? You probably 
did know that the British burned Washington, 
and you accordingly hated them for this bar- 
barous vandalism — but did you know that we 
had burned Toronto a year earlier? 

I left school knowing none of this — it wasn^t 
in my school book, and I learned it in mature years 



WHO IS WITHOUT SIN? 



67 



with amazement. I then learned also that England, 
while she was fighting with us, had her hands full 
fighting Bonaparte, that her war with us was a side- 
show, and that this was uncommonly lucky for 
us — as lucky quite as those ships from France 
under Admiral de Grasse, without whose help 
Washington could never have caught CornwalUs 
and compelled his surrender at Yorktown, Octo- 
ber 19, 1781. Did you know that there were 
more French soldiers and sailors than Americans 
at Yorktown? Is it well to keep these things 
from the young? I have not done with the War 
of 1812. There is a poUtical aspect of it that I 
shall later touch upon — something that my 
school books never mentioned. 

My next question is, what did you know about 
the Mexican War of 1846-1847, when you came 
out of school? The names of our victories, I 
presume, and of Zachary Taylor and Winfield 
Scott; and possibly the treaty of Guadalupe 
Hidalgo, whereby Mexico ceded to us the whole 
of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, 
and we paid her fifteen millions. No doubt 
you know that Santa Anna, the Mexican General, 
had a wooden leg. Well, there is more to know 



68 A STRAIGHT DEAL 

than that, and I found it out much later. I found 
out that General Grant, who had fought with 
credit as a heutenant in the Mexican War, briefly 
summarized it as ^'iniquitous." I gradually, 
through my reading as a man, learned the truth 
about the Mexican War which had not been 
taught me as a boy — that in that war we bulhed 
a weaker power, that we made her our victim, 
that the whole discreditable business had the 
extension of slavery at the bottom of it, and that 
more Americans were against it than had been 
against the War of 1812. But how many Ameri- 
cans ever learn these things? Do not most of 
them, upon leaving school, leave history also 
behind them, and become farmers, or merchants, 
or plumbers, or firemen, or carpenters, or what- 
ever, and read httle but the morning paper for 
the rest of their Hves? 

The blackest page in our history would take a 
long while to read. Not a word of it did I ever 
see in my school textbooks. They were written 
on the plan that America could do no wrong. I 
repeat that, just as we love our friends in spite 
of their faults, and all the more intelligently 
because we know these faults, so our love of our 



WHO IS WITHOUT SIN? 



69 



country would be just as strong, and far more 
intelligent, were we honestly and wisely taught 
in our- early years those acts and policies of hers 
wherein she fell below her lofty and humane 
ideals. Her character and her record on the whole 
from the beginning are fine enough to allow the 
shadows to throw the sunlight into relief. To have 
produced at three stages of our growth three such 
men as Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, is 
quite sufficient justification for our existence. 



CHAPTER VII 
TARRED WITH THE SAME STICK 



i 



CHAPTER VII 



TAERED WITH THE SAME STICK 

The blackest page in our history is our treat- 
ment of the Indian. To speak of it is a thank- 
less task — thankless, and necessary. 

This land was the Indian's house, not ours. 
He was here first, nobody knows how many 
centuries first. We arrived, and we shoved him, 
and shoved him, and shoved him, back, and 
back, and back. Treaty after treaty we made 
with him, and broke. We drew circles round his 
freedom, smaller and smaller. We allowed him 
such and such territory, then took it away and 
gave him less and worse in exchange. Through- 
out a century our promises to him were a whole 
basket of scraps of paper. The other day I saw 
some Indians in California. It had once been 
their place. All over that region they had hunted 
and fished and lived according to their desires, 
enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
We came. To-day the hunting and fishing are 

73 



74 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



restricted by our laws — not the Indian's — 
because we wasted and almost exterminated in a 
very short while what had amply provided the 
Indian with sport and food for a very long while. 

In that region we have taken, as usual, the fertile 
land and the running water, and have allotted 
land to the Indian where neither wood nor water 
exist, no crops will grow, no human Hfe can be 
supported. I have seen the land. I have seen 
the Indian begging at the back door. Oh, yes, 
they were an ^ inferior race." Oh, yes, they didn't 
and couldn't use the land to the best advantage, 
couldn't build Broadway and the Union Pacific 
Railroad, couldn't improve real estate. If you 
choose to call the whole thing manifest destiny,'^ 
I am with you. I'll not dispute that what we 
have made this continent is of greater service to 
mankind than the wilderness of the Indian ever 
could possibly have been — once conceding, as 
you have to concede, the inevitableness of civiliza- 
tion. Neither you, nor I, nor any man, can re- 
mold the sorry scheme of things entire. But we 
could have behaved better to the Indian. That 
was in our power. And we gave him a raw deal 
instead, not once, but again and again. We did 



TARRED WITH THE SAME STICK 75 



it because we could do it without risk, because he 
was weaker and we could always beat him in the 
end. And all the while we were doing it, there 
was our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of In- 
dependence, founded on a new thing in the world, 
proclaiming to mankind the fairest hope yet born, 
that ''All men are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights," and that these were 
now to be protected by law. Ah, no, look at it 
as you will, it is a black page, a raw deal. The 
officers of our frontier army know all about it, 
because they saw it happen. They saw the 
treaties broken, the thieving agents, the tres- 
passing settlers, the outrages that goaded the 
deceived Indian to despair and violence, and when 
they were ordered out to kill him, they knew that 
he had struck in self-defense and was the real 
victim. 

It is too late to do much about it now. The 
good people of the Indian Rights Association try 
to do something ; but in spite of them, what Httle 
harm can still be done is being done through dis- 
honest Indian agents and the mean machinery of 
politics. If you care to know more of the long, 
bad story, there is a book by Helen Hunt Jackson, 



76 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



A Century of Dishonor; it is not new. It as- 
sembles and sets forth what had been perpetrated 
up to the time when it was written. A second 
volume could be added now. 

I have dwelt upon this matter here for a very- 
definite reason, closely connected with my main 
purpose. It's a favorite trick of our anti-British 
friends to call England a *4and-grabber." The 
way in which England has grabbed ^ land right 
along, all over the world, is monstrous, they say. 
England has stolen what belonged to whites, and 
blacks, and bronzes, and yellows, wherever she 
could lay her hands upon it, they say. England 
is a criminal. They repeat this with great satis- 
faction, this land-grabbing indictment. Most of 
them know httie or nothing of the facts, couldn't 
tell you the history of a single case. But what 
are the facts to the man who asks, ''What has 
England done in this war, anyway?" The word 
''land-grabber" has been passed to him by 
German and Sinn Fein propaganda, and he merely 
parrots it forth. He couldn't discuss it at all. 
"Look at the Boers," he may know enough to 
reply, if you remind him that England's land- 
( grabbing was done a good while ago. Well, we 



TARRED WITH THE SAME STICK 77 



shall certainly look at the Boers in due time, but 
just now we must look at ourselves. I suppose 
that the American who denounces England for 
her land-grabbing has forgotten, or else has never 
known, how we grabbed Florida from Spain. The 
pittance that we paid Spain in one of the Florida 
transactions never went to her. The story is a 
plain tale of land-grabbing ; and there are several 
other plain tales that show us to have been 
land-grabbers, if you will read the facts with an 
honest mind. I shall not tell them here. The 
case of the Indian is enough in the way of an 
instance. Our own hands are by no means clean. 
It is not for us to denounce England as a land- 
grabber. 

You cannot hate statistics more than I do. But 
at times there is no dodging them, and this is one 
of the times. In 1803 we paid Napoleon Bonaparte 
fifteen millions for what was then called Louisiana. 
Napoleon had his title to this lacJ from Spain. 
Spain had it from France. France had it — 
how ? She had it because La Salle, a Frenchman, 
sailed down the Mississippi River. This gave 
him title to the land. There were people on the 
bank aheady, long before La Salle came by. 



78 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



It would have surprised them to be told that the 
land was no longer theirs because a man had come 
by on the water. But nobody did tell them. 
They were Indians. They had wives and children 
and wigwams and other possessions in the land 
where they had always lived ; but they were red, 
and the man in the boat was white, and therefore 
they were turned into trespassers because he had 
sailed by in a boat. That was the title to Loui- 
siana which we bought from Napoleon Bonaparte. 

The Louisiana Purchase was a piece of land 
running up the Mississippi, up the Missouri, 
over the Divide, and down the Columbia to the 
Pacific. Before we acquired it, our area was over 
a quarter, but not half, a million square miles. 
This added nearly a milUon square miles more. 
But what had we really bought? Nothing but 
stolen goods. The Indians were there before 
La Salle, from whose boat-saiUng the title we 
bought was derived. ''But," you may object, 
"when whites rob reds or blacks, we call it Dis- 
covery ; land-grabbing is when whites rob whites 
— and that is where I blame England." For 
the sake of argument I concede this, and refer 
you to our acquisition of Texas. This operation 



TARRED WITH THE SAME STICK 79 



followed some years after the Florida operation. 
''By request" we ''annexed" most of present 
Texas — in 1845. That was a trick of our slave- 
holders. They sent people into Texas and these 
people swung the deal. It was virtually a theft 
from Mexico. A little while later, in 1848, we 
"paid" Mexico for California, Arizona, and 
Nevada. But if you read the true story of Fre- 
mont in California, and of the American plots 
there before the Mexican War, to undermine the 
government of a friendly nation, plots connived 
at in Washington with a view to getting California 
for ourselves, upon my word you will find it hard 
to talk of England being a land-grabber and keep 
a straight face. And, were a certain book to fall 
into your hands, the narrative of the Alcalde of 
Monterey, wherein he sets down what of Fremont ^s 
doings in California went on before his eyes, you 
would learn a story of treachery, brutality, and 
greed. All this acquisition of territory, together 
with the Gadsden Purchase a few years later, 
brought our continent to its present area — not 
counting Alaska or some islands later acquired — 
2,970,230 square miles. 
Please understand me very clearly: I am not 



80 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



saying that it has not been far better for the 
world and for civiHzation that we should have 
become the rulers of all this land, instead of its 
being ruled by the Indians or by Spain, or by 
Mexico. That is not at all the point. I am 
merely reminding you of 'the means whereby we 
got the land. We got it mostly by force and 
fraud, by driving out of it through firearms and 
plots people who certainly were there first and 
who were weaker than ourselves. Our reason 
was simply that we wanted it and intended to 
have it. That is precisely what England has 
done. She has by various means not one whit 
better or worse than ours, acquired her possessions 
in various parts of the world because they were 
necessary to her safety and welfare, just as this 
continent was necessary to our safety and welfare. 
Moreover, the pressure upon her, her necessity for 
self-preservation, was far more urgent than was 
the pressm-e upon us. To make you see this, I 
must once again resort to some statistics. 

England's area — herself and adjacent islands 
— is 120,832 square miles. Her population in 
1811 was eighteen and one half miUions. At 
that same time our area was 408,895 square 



TARRED WITH THE SAME STICK 81 

miles, not counting the recent Louisiana Purchase. 
And our population was 7,239,881. With an 
area less than one third of ours (excluding the 
huge Louisiana) England had a population more 
than twice as great. Therefore she was more 
crowded than we were — how much more I leave 
you to figure out for yourself. I appeal to the 
fair-minded American reader who only ^' wants 
to be shown, " and I say to him, when some German 
or anti-British American talks to him about what 
a land-grabber England has been in her time, to 
think of these things and to remember that our 
own past is tarred with the same stick. Let 
every one of us bear in mind that little sentence 
of the Kaiser's, ^'Even now I rule supreme in 
the United States;" let us remember that the 
Armistice and the Peace Treaty do not seem to 
have altered German nature or German plans 
very noticeably, and don't let us muddle our 
brains over the question of the land grabbed by 
the great-grandfathers of present England. 

Any American who is anti-British to-day is by 
just so much pro-German, is helping the trouble 
of the world, is keeping discord alight, is doing his 
bit against human peace and human happiness. 

G 



82 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



There are some other Httle sentences of the Kaiser 
and his Huns of which I shall speak before I 
finish : we must now take up the controversy 
of those men in front of the bulletin board; we 
must investigate what lies behind that controversy. 
Those two m^n are types. One had learned 
nothing since he left school, the other had. 



CHAPTER VIII 
HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 



\ 



CHAPTER VIII 



HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 

So far as I know, it was Mr. Sydney George 
Fisher, an American, who was the first to go back 
to the original documents, and to write from a 
study of these documents the complete truth 
about England and ourselves during the Revolu- 
tion. His admirable book tore off the cloak which 
our school histories had wrapped round the facts. 
He lays bare the political state of Britain at that 
time. What did you learn at your school of 
that political state? Did you ever wonder about 
General Howe and his manner of fighting us? 
Did it ever strike you that, although we were more 
often defeated than victorious in those engage- 
ments with him (and sometimes he even seemed 
to avoid pitched battles with us when the odds 
were all in his favor), yet somehow England didn't 
seem to reap the advantage she should have 
reaped from those contests, didn't follow them up, 

85 



86 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



let US get away, didn't in short make any progress 
to speak of in really conquering us ? Perhaps you 
attributed this to our brave troops and our great 
Washington. Well, our troops were brave and 
Washington was great ; but there was more 
behind — more than your school teaching ever 
led you to suspect, if your schoohng was hke 
mine. I imagined England as being just one 
whole unit of fury and tyranny directed against 
us and determined to stamp out the spark of 
liberty we had kindled. No such thing! Eng- 
land was violently divided in sentiment about us. 
Two parties, almost as opposed as our North and 
South have been — only it was not sectional in 
England — held very different views about liberty 
and the rights of Englishmen. The King's party, 
George the Third and his upholders, were fighting 
to saddle autocracy upon England ; the other 
party, that of Pitt and Burke, were resisting 
this, and their sentiments and political beliefs 
led them to sympathize with our revolt against 
George III. '^I rejoice," writes Horace Walpole, 
Dec. 5, 1777, to the Countess of Upper Ossory, 
"ihsit the Americans are to be free, as they 
had a right to be, and as I am sure they have 



HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 



87 



shown they deserve to be. . . . I own there are 
very able Englishmen left, but they happen to be 
on t'other side of the Atlantic." It was through 
Whig influence that General Howe did not follow 
up his victories over us, because they didn't wish 
us to be conquered, they wished us to be able to 
vindicate the rights to which they held all English- 
men were entitled. These men considered us the 
champions of that British liberty which George 
III was attempting to crush. They disputed the 
rightfulness of the Stamp Act. When we refused 
to submit to the Stamp Tax in 1766, it was then 
that Pitt exclaimed in Parliament: ^^I rejoice 
that America has resisted. ... If ever this 
nation should have a tyrant for a King, six millions 
of freemen, so dead to all the feelings of hberty as 
voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would be fit 
instruments to make slaves of the rest." But 
they were not wilhng. When the hour struck and 
the war came, so many Englishmen were on our 
side that they would not enhst against us, refused 
to fight us, and George III had to go to Germany 
and obtain Hessians to help him out. His war 
against us was lost at home, on Enghsh soil, 
through Enghsh disapproval of his course, almost 



88 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



as much as it was lost here through the indomi- 
table Washington and the help of France. That 
is the actual state of the case, there is the truth. 
Did you hear much about this at school? Did 
you ever learn there that George III had a fake 
Parliament, largely elected by fake votes, which 
did not represent the Enghsh people; that this 
fake Parliament was autocracy's last ditch in 
England; that it choked for a time the Enghsh 
democracy which, after the setback given it by 
the excesses of the French Revolution, went 
forward again until to-day the King of Eng- 
land has less power than the President of the 
United States? I suppose everybody in the 
world who knows the important steps of history 
knows this — except the average American. 
From him it has been concealed by his school 
histories; and generally he never learns any- 
thing about it at all, because once out of school, 
he seldom studies any history again. But why, 
you may possibly wonder, have our school 
histories done this? I think their various au- 
thors may consciously or unconsciously have felt 
that our case against England was not in truth 
very strong, that in fact she had been very 



HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 



89 



easy with us, far easier than any other country 
was being with its colonies at that time. The 
King of France taxed his colonies, the King of 
Spain filled his purse, unhampered, from the 
pockets of Mexico and Peru and Cuba and Porto 
Rico — from whatever pocket into which he could 
put his hand, and the Dutch were doing the 
same without the slightest question of their right 
to do it. Our quarrel with the mother country 
and our breaking away from her in spite of the 
extremely light rein she was driving us with, rested 
in reality upon very slender justification. If ever 
our authors read of the meeting between Franklin, 
Rutledge, and Adams with General Howe, after 
the Battle of Long Island, I think they may 
have felt that we had almost no grievance at all. 
The plain truth of it was, we had been allowed for 
so long to be so nearly free that we determined 
to be free entirely, no matter what England con- 
ceded. Therefore these authors of our school 
textbooks felt that they needed to bolster our 
cause up for the benefit of the young. Accord- 
ingly our boys' and girls' sense of independence 
and patriotism must be nourished by making 
England out a far greater oppressor than ever she 



90 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



really had been. These historians dwelt as 
heavily as they could upon George III and his 
un-English autocracy, and as lightly as they could 
upon the English Pitt and upon all the Enghsh 
sympathy we had. Indeed, about this most of 
them didn't say a word. 

Now that policy may possibly have been desir- 
able once — if it can ever be desirable to suppress 
historic truth from a whole nation. But to-day, 
when we have long stood on our own powerful 
legs and need no bolstering up of such a kind, 
that policy is not only silly, it is pernicious. It is 
pernicious because the world is heaving with 
frightful menaces to all the good that man knows. 
They would strip life of every resource gathered 
through centuries of struggle. Mad mobs, whole 
races of people who have never thought at all, or 
who have now hurled away all pretense of thought, 
aim at mere destruction of everything that is. 
They don't attempt to offer any substitute. 
Down with religion, down with education, down 
with marriage, down with law, down with prop- 
erty: Such is their cry. Wipe the slate blank, 
they say, and then we'll see what we'll write on 
it. Amid this stands Germany with her un- 



HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 91 



changed purpose to own the earth; and Japan 
is doing some thinking. Amid this also is the 
Anglo-Saxon race, the race that has brought our 
law, our order, our safety, our freedom into the 
modern world. That any school histories should 
hinder the members of this race from under- 
standing each other truly and being friends, 
should not be tolerated. 

Many years later than Mr. Sydney George 
Fisher's analysis of England under George III, 
Mr. Charles Altschul has made an examination 
and given an analysis of a great number of 
those school textbooks wherein our boys and 
girls have been and are still being taught a his- 
tory of our Revolution in the distorted form that 
I have briefly summarized. His book was pub- 
lished in 1917, by the George H. Doran Com- 
pany, New York, and is entitled The American 
Revolution in our School Textbooks. Here follow- 
ing are some of his discoveries : 

Of forty school histories used twenty years ago 
in sixty-eight cities, and in many more unreported, 
foiu- tell the truth about King George's pocket Par- 
liament, and thirty- two suppress it. To-day our 
books are not quite so bad, but it is not very much 



92 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



better ; and to-day, be it added, any reforming of 
these textbooks by Boards of Education is likely to 
be prevented, wherever obstruction is possible, 
by every influence \dsible and imdsible that pro- 
German and pro-Irish propaganda can exert. 
Thousands of om* American school children all 
over our country are still being given a version 
of our Revolution and the pohtical state of 
England then, which is as faulty as was George 
Ill's government, ^dth its fake parhament, its 
'^rotten boroughs, " its Little Sarum. ^Meanwhile 
that ^^army of spies" through which the Kaiser 
boasted that he ruled supreme" here, and which, 
though he is gone, is by no means a demobihzed 
army, but a very busy and well-drilled and well- 
conducted army, is very glad that our boys and 
girls should be taught false history, and will do 
its best to see that they are not taught true 
history. 

Mr. Charles Altschul, in his admirable enter- 
prise, addressed himseK to those who preside 
over our school world all over the country ; he re- 
ceived answers from every state in the Union, and 
he examined ninety-three history textbooks in 
those passages and pages which they devoted to 



HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 



93 



our Revolution. These books he grouped accord- 
ing to the amount of information they gave about 
Pitt and Burke and Enghsh sympathy with us 
in our quarrel with George III. These groups are 
five in number, and dwindle down from group 
one, Textbooks which deal fully with the 
grievances of the colonists, give an account of 
general political conditions in England prior to 
the American Revolution, and give credit to prom- 
inent Englishmen for the services they rendered 
the Americans,'^ to group five, Textbooks 
which deal fully with the grievances of the 
colonists, make no reference to general political 
conditions in England prior to the American Rev- 
olution, nor to any prominent Englishmen who 
devoted themselves to the cause of the Americans." 
Of course, what dwindles is the amount said about 
our English sympathizers. In groups three and 
four this is so scanty as to distort the truth and 
send any boy or girl who studied books of these 
groups out of school into life with a very imperfect 
idea indeed of the size and importance of English 
opposition to the policy of George III ; in group 
five nothing is said about this at all. The boys 
and girls who studied books in group five would 



94 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



grow up believing that England was undi^ddedly 
autocratic, tyrannical, and hostile to om^ liberty. 
In his careful and conscientious classification, JMr. 
Altschul gives us the books in use twenty years 
ago (and hence responsible for the opinion of 
Americans now between thirty and forty years 
old) and books in use to-day, and hence responsible 
for the opinion of those American men and women 
who will presently be grown up and will prolong 
for another generation the school-taught ignorance 
and prejudice of their fathers and mothers. I 
select from Mr. Altschul's catalogue only those 
books in use in 1917, when he pubhshed his 
volume, and of these only group five, where the 
facts about Enghsh sjTnpathy with us are totally 
suppressed. Barries^ School History of the United 
States J by Steele. Clmndhr and Chitword's Makers 
of American History, Chambers^ (HanseWs) A 
School History of the United States. Eggleston^s 
A First Book in American History. Eggleston^s 
History of the United States and Its People. Eg- 
gleston^s New Century History of the United States. 
Evans' First Lessons in Georgia History. Evans* 
Tlie Essential Facts of American History. EstilVs 
Beginner's History of Our Country. For man's 



HISTORY ASTIGMATIC 



95 



History of the United States, Montgomery's An 
Elementary American History. Montgomery's The 
Beginner's American History. White's Beginner's 
History of the United States, 

If the reader has followed me from the beginning, 
he will recollect a letter, parts of which I quoted, 
from a correspondent who spoke of Mont- 
gomery's history, giving passages in which a fair 
^ and adequate recognition of Pitt and our English 
sympathizers and their opposition to George III 
is made. This would seem to indicate a revision 
of the work since Mr. Altschul published his lists, 
and to substantiate the hope I expressed in my 
original article, and which I here repeat. Surely 
the publishers of these books will revise them ! 
Surely any patriotic American publisher and any 
patriotic board of education, school principal, or 
educator, will watch and resist all propaganda and 
other sinister influence tending to perpetuate this 
error of these school histories ! Whatever excuse 
they once had, be it the explanation I have offered 
above, or some other, there is no excuse to-day. 
These books have laid the foundation from which 
has sprung the popular prejudice against Eng- 
land. It has descended from father to son. It 



96 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



has been further solidified by many tales for 
boys and girls, written by men and women 
who acquired their inaccurate knowledge at our 
schools. And it plays straight into the hands of 
our enemies. 



CHAPTER IX 
CONCERNING A COMPLEX 



( 



CHAPTER IX 



CONCERNING A COMPLEX 

All of these books, history and fiction, drop into 
the American mind during its early springtime 
the seed of antagonism, estabhsh in fact an anti- 
English complex." It is as pretty a case of 
complex on the wholesale as could well be found 
by either historian or psychologist. It is not so 
violent as the complex which has been planted 
in the German people by forty years of very 
adroitly and carefully planned training : they 
were taught to distrust and hate everybody and 
to consider themselves so superior to anybody that 
their sacred duty as they saw it in 1914 was to 
enslave the world, in order to force upon the world 
the priceless benefits of their Kultur. Under the 
shock of war that complex dilated into a form of 
real hysteria or insanity. Our anti-English com- 
plex is fortunately milder than that ; but none 
the less does it savor slightly, as any nerve 
specialist or psychological doctor would tell you 

99 



1 



100 A STRAIGHT DEAL 

— it savors slightly of hysteria, that hundreds of 
thousands of American men and women of every 
grade of education and ignorance should auto- 
matically exclaim whenever the right button is 
pressed, England is a land-grabber," and ''What 
has England done in the War?" 

The word complex has been in our dictionary for 
a long while. This famihar adjective has been 
made by certain scientific people into a noun, 
and for brevity and convenience employed to 
denote something that almost all of us harbor 
in some form or other. These complexes, these 
lumps of ideas or impressions that match each 
other, that are of the same pattern, and that are 
also invariably tinctured with either a pleasur- 
able or painful emotion, he buried in our minds, 
unthought of but ahve, and lurk always ready to 
set up a ferment, whenever some new thing from, 
outside that matches them enters the mind and 
hence starts them off. The ''suppressed com- 
plex" I need not describe, as our English complex 
is by no means suppressed. Known to us all, 
probably, is the poUtical complex. Year after 
year we have been excited about elections and 
candidates and pohcies, preferring one party to 



CONCERNING A COMPLEX 101 



the other. If this preference has been very 
marked, or even violent, you know how disincUned 
we are to give credit to the other party for any 
act or pohcy, no matter how excellent in itself, 
which, had our own party been its sponsor, we 
should have been heart and soul for. You know 
how easily we forget the good deeds of the opposite 
party and how easily we remember its bad deeds. 
That's a good simple ordinary example of a 
complex. Its workings can be discerned in the 
experience of us all. In our present discussion 
it is very much to the point. 

EstabHshed in the soft young minds of our 
school boys and girls by a series of reiterated 
statements about the tyranny and hostility of 
England towards us in the Revolution, state- 
ments which they have to remember and master 
by study from day to day, tinctured by the 
anxiety about the examination ahead, when the 
students must know them or fail, these incidents 
of school work being also tinctured by another 
emotion, that of patriotism, enthusiasm for 
Washington, for the Declaration of Independence, 
for Valley Forge — thus estabhshed in the regular 
way of all complexes, this anti-Enghsh complex 



102 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



is fed and watered by what we learn of the War of 
1812, by what we learn of the Civil War of 1861, ^ 
and by many lesser events in our history thus 
far. And just as a Repubhcan will admit nothing 
good of a Democrat and a Democrat nothing good 
of a Republican because of the poHtical com- 
plex, so does the great — the vast — majority of 
Americans automatically and easily remember 
everything against England and forget every- 
thing in her favor. Just try it any day you 
like. Ask any average American you are sitting 
next to in a train what he knows about England ; 
and if he does remember anything and can tell 
it to you, it will be unfavorable nine times in ten. 
The mere word England" starts his complex 
off, and out comes every fact it has seized that 
matches his school-implanted prejudice, just as 
it has rejected every fact that does not match it. 
There is absolutely no other way to explain the 
American habit of speaking ill of England and 
well of France. Several times in the past, France 
has been flagrantly hostile to us. But there was 
Lafayette, there was Rochambeau, and the great 
service France did us then against England. 
Hence from our school histories we have a pro- 



CONCERNING A COMPLEX 103 



French complex. Under its workings we auto- 
matically remember every good turn France has 
done us and automatically forget the evil turns. 
Again try the experiment yourself. How many 
Americans do you think that you will find who can 
recall, or who even know when you recall to them 
the insolent and meddlesome Citizen Genet, 
envoy of the French Republic, and how Wash- 
ington requested his recall? Or the French 
privateers that a Httle later, about 1797-98, 
preyed upon our commerce? And the hatred of 
France which many Americans felt and expressed 
at that time? How many remember that the 
King of France, directly our Revolution was over, 
was more hostile to us than England ? 



CHAPTER X 
JACKSTRAWS 



CHAPTER X 



JACKSTRAWS 

Jackstraws is a game which most of us have 
played in our youth. You empty on a table a 
box of miniature toy rakes, shovels, picks, axes, 
all sorts of tools and implements. These lie 
under each other and above each other in intri- 
cate confusion, not unlike cross timber in a 
western forest, only instead of being logs, they 
are about two inches long and very light. The 
players sit round the table and with little hooks 
try in turn to Hft one jackstraw out of the heap, 
without moving any of the others. You go on 
until you do move one of the others, and this 
loses you your turn. European diplomacy at 
any moment of any year reminds you, if you in- 
spect it closely, of a game of jackstraws. Every 
sort and shape of intrigue is in the general heap 
and tangle, and the jealous nations sit round, 
each trying to hft out its own jackstraw. Luckily 
for us, we have not often been involved in these 

107 



108 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



games of jackstraw hitherto; unluckily for us, 
we must be henceforth involved. If we kept 
out, our luck would be still worse. 

Immediately after our Revolution, there was 
one of these heaps of intrigue, in which we were 
concerned. This was at the time of the negotia- 
tions leading to the Treaty of Paris, to which 
I made reference at the close of the last section. 
This was in 1783. Twenty years later, in 1803, 
occurred the heap of jackstraws that led to the 
Louisiana Purchase. Twenty years later, in 
1823, occurred the heap of jackstraws from which 
emerged the Momoe Doctrine. Each of these 
dates, dotted along through our early decades, 
marks a very important crisis in our history. 
It is well that they should be grouped together, 
because together they disclose, so to speak, a 
coherent pattern. This coherent pattern is Eng- 
land's attitude towards ourselves. It is to be 
perceived, faintly yet distinctly, in 1783, and it 
grows clearer and ever more clear until in 1898, 
in the game of jackstraws played when we de- 
clared war upon Spain, the pattern is so clear 
that it could not be mistaken by any one who 
was not willfully blinded by an anti-English com- 



JACKSTRAWS 



109 



plex. This pattern represents a preference on 
England's part for ourselves to other nations. 
I do not ask you to think England's reason for 
this preference is that she has loved us so much ; 
that she has loved others so much less — there 
is her reason. She has loved herself better than 
anybody. So must every nation. So does every 
nation. 

Let me briefly speak of the first game of jack- 
straws, played at Paris in 1783. Our Revolu- 
tion was over. The terms of peace had to be 
drawn. FrankUn, Jay, Adams, and Laurens 
were our negotiators. The various important 
points were acknowledgment of our independence, 
settlement of boundaries, freedom of fishing in 
the neighborhood of the Canadian coast. We 
had agreed to reach no settlement with England 
separately from France and Spain. They were 
our recent friends. England, our recent enemy, 
sent Richard Oswald as her peace commissioner. 
This private gentleman had placed his fortune 
at our disposal during the war, and was Franklin's 
friend. Lord Shelburne wrote Franklin that if 
this was not satisfactory, to say so, and name 
any one he preferred. But Oswald was satis- 



\ 

110 A STRAIGHT DEAL 



factory; and David Hartley, another friend of 
Franklin's and also a sympathizer with our 
Revolution, was added; and in these circum- 
stances and by these men the Treaty was made. 
To France we broke our promise to reach no sep- 
arate agreement with England. We negotiated 
directly with the British, and the Articles were 
signed without consultation with the French 
Government. When Vergennes, the French Min- 
ister, saw the terms, he remarked in disgust that 
England would seem to have bought a peace 
rather than made one. By the treaty we got 
the Northwest Territory and the basin of the Ohio 
River to the Mississippi. Our recent friend, the 
French King, was much opposed to our having 
so much territory. It was our recent enemy, 
England, who agreed that we should have it. 
This was the result of that game of jackstraws. 

Let us remember several things : in our 
Revolution, France had befriended us, not be- 
cause she loved us so much, but because she 
loved England so little. In the Treaty of Paris, 
England stood with us, not because she loved us 
so much, but because she loved France so little. 
We must cherish no illusions. Every nation 



JAGKSTRAWS 



111 



must love itself more than it loves its neighbor. 
Nevertheless, in this pattern of England^s policy 
in 1783, where she takes her stand with us and 
against other nations, there is a deep significance. 
Our notions of law, our notions of life, our notions 
of religion, oiu* notions of liberty, our notions of 
what a man should be and what a woman should 
be, are so much more akin to her notions than to 
those of any other nation, that they draw her 
toward us rather than toward any other nation. 
That is the lesson of the first game of jackstraws. 

Next comes 1803. Upon the Louisiana Pur- 
chase, I have already touched; but not upon 
its diplomatic side. In those years the European 
game of diplomacy was truly portentous. Bona- 
parte had appeared, and Bonaparte was the 
storm centre. From the heap of jackstraws I 
shall lift out only that which directly concerns 
us and our acquisition of that enormous terri- 
tory, then called Louisiana. Bonaparte had 
dreamed and planned an empire over here. Cer- 
tain vicissitudes disenchanted him. A plan to 
invade England also helped to deflect his mind 
from establishing an outpost of his empire upon 
our continent. For us he had no love. Our 



112 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



principles were democratic, he was a colossal 
autocrat. He called us ^'the reign of chatter/' 
and he would have liked dearly to put out our 
light. Addington was then the British Prime 
Minister. Robert R. Livingston was our minister 
in Paris. In the history of Henry Adams, in 
Volume II at pages 52 and 53, you may find more 
concerning Bonaparte's dishke of the United 
States. You may also find that Talleyrand ex- 
pressed the view that socially and economically 
England and America were one and indivisible. 
In Volume I of the same history, at page 439, 
you will see the mention which Pichon made to 
Talleyrand of the overtures which England was 
incessantly making to us. At some time during 
all this, rumor got abroad of Bonaparte's pro- 
jects regarding Louisiana. In the second volume 
of Henry Adams, at pages 23 and 24, you will 
find Addington remarking to our minister to 
Great Britain, Rufus King, that it would not do 
to let Bonaparte establish himself in Louisiana. 
Addington very plainly hints that Great Britain 
would back us in any such event. This backing 
of us by Great Britain found very cordial ac- 
ceptance in the mind of Thomas Jefferson. A 



JAGKSTRAWS 



113 



year before the Louisiana Purchase was con- 
summated, and when the threat of Bonaparte 
was in the air, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Living- 
ston, on April 18, 1802, that ''the day France 
takes possession of New Orleans, we must marry 
ourselves to the British fleet and nation." In 
one of his many memoranda to Talleyrand, 
Livingston alludes to the British fleet. He also 
points out that France may by taking a cer- 
tain course estrange the United States for ever 
and bind it closely to France's great enemy. 
This particular address to Talleyrand is dated 
February 1, 1803, and may be found in the 
Annals of Congress, 1802-1803, at pages 1078 
to 1083. I quote a sentence: ''The critical 
moment has arrived which rivets the connexion 
of the United States to France, or binds a young 
and growing people for ages hereafter to her 
mortal and inveterate enemy." After this, hints 
follow concerning the relative maritime power of 
France and Great Britain. Livingston suggests 
that if Great Britain invade Louisiana, who can 
oppose her? Once n\ore he refers to Great 
Britain's superior fleet. This interesting address 
concludes with the following exordium to France : 
I 



114 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



^^She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men 
and the favor of Heaven by the surrender of a 
distant wilderness, which can neither add to her 
wealth nor to her strength." This, as you will 
perceive, is quite a pointed remark. Throughout 
the Louisiana diplomacy, and negotiations to 
which this diplomacy led, Li^dngston's would 
seem to be the master American mind and pro- 
phetic vision. But I must keep to my jackstraws. 
On April 17, 1803, Bonaparte's brother, Lucien, 
reports a conversation held with him by Bona- 
parte. What purposes, what oscillations, may 
have been going on deep in Bonaparte's secret 
mind, no one can tell. We may guess that he 
did not relinquish his plan about Louisiana defi- 
nitely for some time after the thought had dawned 
upon him that it would be better if he did 
rehnquish it. But unless he was lying to his 
brother Lucien on April 17, 1803, we get no 
mere ghmpse, but a perfectly clear sight of what 
he had come finally to think. It was certainly 
worth while, he said to Lucien, to sell when 
you could what you were certain to lose; ''for 
the Enghsh . . . are aching for a chance to 
capture it. . . . Our navy, so inferior to our 



JACKSTRAWS 



115 



neighbor's across the Channel, will always cause 
our colonies to be exposed to great risks. . . . 
As to the sea, my dear fellow, you must know 
that there we have to lower the flag. . . . The 
English navy is, and long will be, too dominant." 

That was on April 17. On May 2, the 
Treaty of Cession was signed by the exultant 
Livingston. Bonaparte, instead of establishing 
an outpost of autocracy at New Orleans, sold to 
us not only the small piece of land which we had 
originally in mind, but the huge piece of land 
whose dimensions I have given above. We paid 
him fifteen millions for nearly a million square 
miles. The formal transfer was made on Decem- 
ber 17 of that same year, 1803. There is my 
second jackstraw. 

Thus, twenty years after the first time in 
1783, Great Britain stood between us and the 
designs of another nation. To that other nation 
her fleet was the deciding obstacle. England did 
not love us so much, but she loved France so much 
less. For the same reasons which I have suggested 
before, self-interest, behind which lay her demo- 
cratic kinship with our ideals, ranged her with us. 

To place my third jackstraw, which follows 



116 A STRAIGHT DEAL 

twenty years after the second, uninterruptedly 
in this group, I pass over for the moment our 
War of 1812. To that I will return after I have 
dealt with the third jackstraw, namely, the Mon- 
roe Doctrine. It was England that suggested the 
Monroe Doctrine to us. From the origin of this 
in the mind of Canning to its public announcement 
upon our side of the water, the pattern to which 
I have alluded is for the third time very clearly 
to be seen. 

How much did your school histories tell you 
about the Monroe Doctrine? I confess that 
my notion of it came to this : President Monroe 
informed the kings of Europe that they must keep 
away from this hemisphere. Whereupon the 
kings obeyed him and have remained obedient 
ever since. Of George Canning I knew nothing. 
Another large game of jackstraws was being 
played in Europe in 1823. Certain people there 
had formed the Holy Alliance. Among these. 
Prince Metternich the Austrian was undoubtedly 
the master mind. He saw that by England's 
victory at Waterloo a threat to all monarchical and 
dynastic systems of government had been created. 
He also saw that our steady growth was a part of 



JACKSTRAWS 



117 



the same threat. With this in mind, in 1822, he 
brought about the Holy AlHance. fhe first Article 
of the Holy AlHance reads : ^^The high contracting 
Powers, being convinced that the system of 
representative government is as equally incom- 
patible with the monarchical principle as the 
maxim of sovereignty of the people with the 
Divine right, engage mutually, in the most solemn 
manner, to use all their efforts to put an end to 
the system of representative governments, in 
whatever country it may exist in Europe, and to 
prevent its being introduced in those countries 
where it is not yet known/' 

Behind these words lay a design, hardly veiled, 
not only against South America, but against our- 
selves. In a volume entitled With the Father Sy 
by John Bach McMaster, and also in the fifth 
volume of Mr. McMaster's history, chapter 41, you 
will find more amply what I abbreviate here. Can- 
ning understood the threat to us contained in the 
Holy Alliance. He made a suggestion to Richard 
Rush, our minister to England. The suggestion 
was of such moment, and the ultimate danger to 
us from the Holy Alliance was of such moment, 
that Rush made haste to put the matter into the 



118 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



hands of President Monroe. President Monroe 
likewise found the matter very grave, and he 
therefore consulted Thomas Jefferson. At that 
time Jefferson had retired from public life and was 
living quietly at his place in Virginia. That 
President Monroe's comm,unication deeply stirred 
him is to be seen in his reply, written October 
24, 1823. Jefferson says in part: ^^The ques- 
tion presented by the letters you have sent me 
is the most momentous which has ever been 
offered to my contemplation since that of inde- 
pendence. . . . One nation most of all could 
disturb us. . . . She now offers to lead, aid and 
accompany us. . . . With her on our side we 
need not fear the whole world. With her, then, 
we should most seriously cherish a cordial friend- 
ship, and nothing would tend more to unite our 
affections than to be fighting once more, side by 
side, in the same cause." 

Thus for the second time, Thomas Jefferson 
advises a friendship with Great Britain. He 
realizes as fully as did Bonaparte the power of 
her navy, and its value to us. It is striking and 
strange to find Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the 
Declaration of Independence in 1776, writing 



\ 



JACKSTRAWS 119 

in 1823 about uniting our affections and about 
fighting once more side by side with England. 

It was the revolt of the Spanish Colonies from 
Spain in South America, and Canning's fear 
that France might obtain dominion in America, 
which led him to make his suggestion to Rush. 
The gist of the suggestion was, that we should 
join with Great Britain in saying that both coun- 
tries were opposed to any intervention by Europe 
in the western hemisphere. Over our announce- 
ment there was much delight in England. In the 
London Courier occurs a sentence, ^'The South 
American Republics — protected by the two 
nations that possess the institutions and speak 
the language of freedom." In this fragment 
from the London Courier, the kinship at which 
I have hinted as being felt by England in 1783, 
and in 1803, is definitely expressed. From the 
Holy Alliance, from the general European diplo- 
matic game, and from England's preference for 
us who spoke her language and thought her 
thoughts about liberty, law, what a man should 
be, what a woman should be, issued the Monroe 
Doctrine. And you will find that no matter what 
dynastic or ministerial interruptions have oc- 



120 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



curred to obscure this recognition of kinship 
with us and preference for us upon the part of 
the Enghsh people, such interruptions are always 
temporary and he always upon the surface of Eng- 
hsh sentiment. Beneath the surface the recog- 
nition of kinship persists unchanged and invariably 
reasserts itseh. 

That is my third jackstraw. Canning spoke 
to Rush, Rush consulted Monroe, Monroe con- 
sulted Jefferson, and Jefferson wrote what we 
have seen. That, stripped of every encimibering 
circumstance, is the story of the Monroe Doctrine. 
Ever since that day the Monroe Doctrine has 
rested upon the broad back of the British Navy. 
This has been no secret to our leading historians, 
our authoritative writers on diplomacy, and our 
educated and thinking pubhc men. But they 
have not generally been eager to mention it; 
and as to our school textbooks, none that I 
studied mentioned it at all. 



CHAPTER XI 
SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 



( 



CHAPTER XI 

SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 

Do not suppose because I am reminding you 
of these things and shall remind you of some more, 
that I am trying to make you hate France. I 
am only trying to persuade you to stop hating 
England. I wish to show you how much reason 
you have not to hate her, which your school 
histories pass lightly over, or pass wholly by. 
I want to make it plain that your anti-Enghsh 
complex and your pro-French complex entice 
your memory into retaining only evil about 
England and only good about France. That is 
why I pull out from the recorded, certified, and 
perfectly ascertainable past, these few large facts. 
They amply justify, as it seems to me, and as I 
think it must seem to any reader with an open 
mind, what I said about the pattern. 

We must now touch upon the War of 1812. 
There is a political aspect of this war which casts 
upon it a Hght not generally shed by our school 

123 



124 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



histories. Bonaparte is again the point. Nine 
years after our Louisiana Purchase from him, we 
declared war upon England. At that moment 
England was heavily absorbed in her struggle 
with Bonaparte. It is true that we had a genuine 
grievance against her. In searching for British 
sailors upon our ships, she impressed our own. 
This was our justification. 

We made a pretty lame showing, in spite of 
the victories of our frigates and sloops. Our 
one signal triumph on land came after the Treaty 
of Peace had been signed at Ghent. During 
the years of war, it was lucky for us that 
England had Bonaparte upon her hands. She 
could not give us much attention. She was 
iDattUng with the great Autocrat. We, by de- 
claring war upon her at such a time, played 
into Bonaparte's hands, and virtually, by em- 
barrassing England, struck a blow on the side of 
autocracy and against our own pohtical faith. 
It was a feeble blow, it did but sHght harm. 
And regardless of it England struck Bonaparte 
down. His hope that we might damage and 
lessen the power of her fleet that he so much re- 
spected and feared, was not reahzed. We made 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 



125 



the Treaty of Ghent. The impressing of sailors 
from our vessels was tacitly abandoned. The 
next time that people were removed from vessels, 
it was not England who removed them, it was we 
ourselves, who had declared war on England for 
doing so, we ourselves who removed them from 
Canadian vessels in the Behring Sea, and from 
the British ship Trent. These incidents we shall 
reach in their proper place. As a result of 
the War of 1812, some EngHsh felt justified in 
taking from us a large slice of land, but Wellington 
said, '^I think you have no right, from the state 
of the war, to demand any concession of territory 
from America." This is all that need be said 
about our War of 1812. 

Because I am trying to give only the large 
incidents, I have intentionally made but a mere 
allusion to Florida and our acquisition of that 
territory. It was a case again of England's 
siding with us against a third power, Spain, in 
this instance. I have also omitted any account 
of our acquisition of Texas, when England was 
not friendly — I am not sure why : probably 
because of the friction between us over Oregon. 
But certain other minor events there are, which 



126 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



do require a brief reference — the boundaries of 
Maine, of Oregon, the Isthmian Canal, Cleveland 
and Venezuela, Roosevelt and Alaska ; and these 
disputes we shall now take up together, before 
we deal with the very large matter of our trouble 
with England during the Civil War. Chronolog- 
ically, of course, Venezuela and Alaska fall after 
the Civil War ; but they belong to the same class 
to which Maine and Oregon belong. Together, 
all of these incidents and controversies form a 
group in which the underlying permanence of 
British good-will towards us is distinctly to be 
discerned. Sometimes, as I have said before, 
British anger with us obscures the friendly senti- 
ment. But this was on the surface, and it al- 
ways passed. As usual, it is only the anger that 
has stuck in our minds. Of the outcome of these 
controversies and the British temperance and 
restraint which brought about such outcome the 
popular mind retains no impression. 

The boundary of Maine was found to be un- 
defined to the extent of 12,000 square miles. 
Both Maine and New Brunswick claimed this, of 
course. Maine took her coat off to fight, so did 
New Brunswick. Now, we backed Maine, and 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 



127 



voted supplies and men to her. Not so England. 
More soberly, she said, "Let us arbitrate." We 
agreed, it was done. By the umpire Maine was 
awarded more than half what she claimed. And 
then we disputed the umpire's decision on the 
ground he hadn't given us the whole thing ! 
Does not this remind you of some of our base- 
ball bad manners? It was settled later, and 
we got, differently located, about the original 
award. 

Did you learn in school about "fifty-four forty, 
or fight"? We were ready to take off our coat 
again. Or at least, that was the platform in 1844 
on which President Polk was elected. At that 
time, what lay between the north line of California 
and the south line of Alaska, which then belonged 
to Russia, was called Oregon. We said it was 
ours. England disputed this. Each nation based 
its title on discovery. It wasn't really far from 
an even claim. So Polk was elected, which ap- 
parently meant war; his words were bellicose. 
We blustered rudely. Feeling ran high in Eng- 
land ; but she didn't take off her coat. Her 
ambassador, Pakenham, stiff at first, unbent later. 
Under sundry missionary impulses, more Americans 



128 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



than British had recently settled along the Co- 
lumbia River and in the Willamette Valley. 
People from Missouri followed. You may read 
of our impatient violence in Professor Dunning's 
book, The British Empire and the United States, 
Indeed, this volume tells at length everything 
I am telling you briefly about these boundary 
disputes. The settlers wished to be under our 
Government. Virtually upon their preference 
the matter was finally adjusted. England met 
us with a compromise, advantageous to us and 
reasonable for herself. Thus, again, was her 
conduct moderate and pacific. If you think that 
this was through fear of us, I can only leave you 
to our western blow-hards of 1845, or to your 
anti-British complex. What I see in it, is another 
sign of that fundamental sense of kinship, that 
persisting unwillingness to have a real scrap with 
us, that stares plainly out of our whole first 
century — the same feeling which prevented so 
many English from enlisting against us in the 
Revolution that George III was obliged to get 
Hessians. 

Nicaragua comes next. There again they were 
quite angry with us on top, but controlled in 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 



129 



the end by the persisting disposition of kinship. 
They had land in Nicaragua with the idea of an 
Isthmian Canal. This we did not like. They 
thought we should mind our own business. But 
they agreed with us in the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty that both should build and run the canal. 
Vagueness about territory near by raised further 
trouble, and there we were in the right. Eng- 
1 land yielded. The years went on and we grew, 
until the time came when we decided that if 
there was to be any canal, no one but ourselves 
should have it. We asked to be let off the old 
treaty. England let us off, stipulating the canal 
should be unfortified, and an ^^open door'' to all. 
Our representative agreed to this, much to our 
displeasure. Indeed, I do not think he should 
have agreed to it. Did England hold us to it? 
All this happened in the lifetime of many of us, 
and we know that she did not hold us to it. She 
gave us what we asked, and she did so because 
she felt its justice, and that it in no way menaced 
her with injury. All this began in 1850 and 
ended, as we know, in the time of Roosevelt. 

About 1887 our seal-fishing in the Behring 
Sea brought on an acute situation. Into the 



130 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



many and intricate details of this^ I need not go ; 
you can find them in any good encyclopedia, 
and also in Harper^ s Magazine for April, 1891, 
and in other places. Our fishing clashed with 
Canada's. We assumed jurisdiction over the 
whole of the sea, which is a third as big as the 
Mediterranean, on the quite fantastic ground 
that it was an inland sea. Ignoring the law that 
nobody has jurisdiction outside the three-mile 
limit from their shores, we seized Canadian vessels 
sixty miles from land. In fact, we did virtually 
what we had gone to war with England for doing 
in 1812. But England did not go to war. She 
asked for arbitration. Throughout this, our 
tone was raw and indiscreet, while hers was con- 
spicuously the opposite ; we had done an un- 
warrantable and high-handed thing; our claim 
that Behring Sea was an 'Enclosed" sea was 
abandoned ; the arbitration went against us, and 
we paid damages for the Canadian vessels. 

In 1895, in the course of a century's dispute 
over the boundary between Venezuela and British 
Guiana, Venezuela took prisoner some British 
subjects, and asked us to protect her from the 
consequences. Richard Olney, Grover Cleveland's 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 131 



Secretary of State, informed Lord Salisbury, 
Prime Minister of England, that "in accordance 
with the Monroe Doctrine, the United States 
must insist on arbitration" — that is, of the dis- 
puted boundary. It was an abrupt extension 
of the Monroe Doctrine. It was dictating to 
England the manner in which she should settle 
a difference with another country. Salisbury 
declined. On December 17th Cleveland an- 
nounced to England that the Monroe Doctrine 
applied to every stage of our national life, and 
that as Great Britain had for many years re- 
fused to submit the dispute to impartial arbitra- 
tion, nothing remai;ned to us but to accept the 
situation. Moreover, if the disputed territory 
was found to belong to Venezuela, it would be the 
duty of the United States to resist, by every 
means in its power, the aggressions of Great 
Britain. This was, in effect, an ultimatum. The 
stock market went to pieces. In general American 
opinion, war was coming. The situation was 
indeed grave. First, we owed the Monroe Doc- 
trine's very existence to English backing. Second, 
the Doctrine itself had been a declaration against 
autocracy in the shape of the Holy Alliance, and 



132 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



England was not autocracy. Lastly, as a nation, 
Venezuela seldom conducted herself or her gov- 
ernment on the steady plan of democracy. Eng- 
land was exasperated. And yet England yielded. 
It took a little time, but arbitration settled it in 
the end — at about the same time that we flatly 
declined to arbitrate our quarrel with Spain. 
History will not acquit us of groundless meddhng 
and arrogance in this matter, while England 
comes out of it having again shown in the end 
both forbearance and good manners. Before 
another Venezuelan incident in 1902, I take up a 
burning dispute of 1903. 

As Oregon had formerly been, so Alaska had 
later become, a grave source of friction between 
England and ourselves. Canada claimed bound- 
aries in Alaska which we disputed. This had 
smouldered along through a number of years 
until the discovery of gold in the Klondike region 
fanned it to a somewhat menacing flame. In 
this instance, history is as unlikely to approve the 
conduct of the Canadians as to approve our 
bad manners towards them upon many other 
occasions. The matter came to a head in Roose- 
velt's first administration. You will find it all 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 133 



in the Life of John Hay by William R. Thayer, 
Volume II. A commission to settle the matter 
had dawdled and failed. Roosevelt was tired 
of delays. Commissioners again were appointed, 
three Americans, two Canadians, and Alverstone, 
Lord Chief Justice, to represent England. To 
his friend Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, about 
to sail for an English holiday, Roosevelt wrote a 
private letter privately to be shown to Mr. 
Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, and certain other 
Englishmen of mark. He said: ^^The claim of 
the Canadians for access to deep water along 
any part of the Alaskan coast is just exactly as 
indefensible as if they should now suddenly claim 
the Island of Nantucket." Canada had objected 
to our Commissioners as being not ^ impartial 
jurists of repute." As to this, Roosevelt's letter 
to Holmes ran on : ^^I believe that no three men 
in the United States could be found who would 
be more anxious than our own delegates to do 
justice to the British claim on all points where 
there is even a color of right on the British side. 
But the objection raised by certain British 
authorities to Lodge, Root, and Turner, especially 
to Lodge and Root, was that they had committed 



134 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



themselves on the general proposition. No man 
in pubHc life in any position of prominence could 
have possibly avoided committing himseK on 
the proposition, any more than Mr. Chamberlain 
could avoid committing himself on the ownership 
of the Orkneys if some Scandinavian country 
suddenly claimed them. If this embodied other 
points to which there was legitimate doubt, I 
beUeve Mr. Chamberlain would act fairly and 
squarely in deciding the matter; but if he ap- 
pointed a commission to settle up all these ques- 
tions, I certainly should not expect him to ap- 
point three men, if he could find them, who be- 
heved that as to the Orkneys the question was 
an open one. I wish to make one last effort 
to bring about an agreement through the Com- 
mission. . . . But if there is a disagreement 
. . . I shall take a position which will prevent 
any possibility of arbitration hereafter ; . . . will 
render it necessary for Congress to give me the 
authority to run the hne as we claim it, by our 
own people, without any further regard to the 
attitude of England and Canada. If I paid 
attention to mere abstract rights, that is the 
position I ought to take anyhow. I have not 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 



135 



taken it because I wish to exhaust every effort 
to have the affair settled peacefully and with due 
regard to England's honor." 

That is the way to do these things : not by a 
peremptory public letter, like Olney's to Salis- 
bury, which enrages a whole people and makes 
temperate action doubly difficult, but thus, by a 
private letter to the proper persons, very plain, 
very unmistakable, but which remains private, 
a sufficient word to the wise, and not a red rag 
to the mob. ^'To have the affair settled peace- 
fully and with due regard to England's honor." 
Thus Roosevelt. England desired no war with 
us this time, any more than at the other time. 
The Commission went to work, and, after in- 
vestigating the facts, decided in our favor. 

Our list of boundary episodes finished, I must 
touch upon the affair with the Kaiser regarding 
Venezuela's debts. She owed money to Germany, 
Italy, and England. The Kaiser got the ear of 
the Tory government under Salisbury, and be- 
tween the three countries a secret pact was made 
to repay themselves. Venezuela is not seldom 
reluctant to settle her obligations, and she was 
slow upon this occasion. It was the Kaiser's 



136 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



chance — he had been trying it aheady at other 
points — to slide into a foothold over here under 
the camouflage of collecting from Venezuela her 
just debt to him. So with warships he and his 
alhes established what he called a pacific blockade 
on Venezuelan ports. 

I must skip the comedy that now went on in 
Washington (you will find it on pages 287-288 of 
Mr. Thayer's John Hay, Volume II) and come 
at once to Mr. Roosevelt's final word to the 
Kaiser, that if there was not an offer to arbitrate 
within forty-eight hours, Admiral Dewey would 
sail for Venezuela. In thirty-six hoiurs arbitration 
was agreed to. England withdrew from her share 
in the secret pact. Had she wanted war with us, 
her fleet and the Kaiser's could have outmatched 
our own. She did not ; and the Kaiser had still 
very clearly and sorely in remembrance what 
choice she had made between standing with him 
and standing with us a few years before this, upon 
an occasion that was also connected with Admiral 
Dewey. This I shall fully consider after sum- 
marizing those international episodes of our Civil 
War wherein England was concerned. 

This completes my Ust of minor troubles with 



SOME FAMILY SCRAPS 137 



England that we have had since Canning sug- 
gested our Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Minor 
troubles, I call them, because they are all smaller 
than those during our Civil War. The full record 
of each is an open page of history for you to read 
at leisure in any good library. You will find 
that the anti-English complex has its influence 
sometimes in the pages of our historians, but 
Professor Dunning is free from it. You will 
find, whatever transitory gusts of anger, jealousy, 
hostility, or petulance may have swept over the 
English people in their relations with us, these 
gusts end in a calm; and this calm is due to 
the common-sense of the race. It revealed itself 
in the treaty at the close of our Revolution, and 
it has been the ultimate controlling factor in 
English dealings with us ever since. And now I 
reach the last of my large historic matters, the 
Civil War, and our war with Spain. 



I 



CHAPTER XII 
ON THE RAGGED EDGE 



f 



CHAPTER XII 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln, nominee of 
the Republican party, which was opposed to 
the extension of slavery, was elected President 
of the United States. Forty-one days later, 
the legislature of South Carolina, determined to 
perpetuate slavery, met at Columbia, but, on 
account of a local epidemic, moved to Charleston. 
There, about noon, December 20th, it unani- 
mously declared ^Hhat the Union now subsist- 
ing between South Carolina and other States, 
under the name of the United States of America, 
is hereby dissolved." Soon other slave states 
followed this lead, and among them all, during 
those final months of Buchanan's presidency, 
preparedness went on, unchecked by the half- 
feeble, half-treacherous Federal Government. 
Lincoln, in his inaugural address, March 4, 
1861, declared that he had no purpose, directly 
or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of 

141 



142 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



slavery in the states where it existed. To the 
seceded slave states he said: "In your hands, 
my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, 
is the momentous issue of civil war. The Gov- 
ernment will not assail you. You can have no 
conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You can have no oath registered in heaven to 
destroy the Government; while I shall have the 
most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend 
it.^' This changed nothing in the slave states. 
It was not enough for them that slavery could 
keep on where it was. To spread it where it 
was not, had been their aim for a very long while. 
The next day, March 5th, Lincoln had letters 
from Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. Major 
Anderson was besieged there by the batteries 
of secession, was being starved out, might hold 
on a month longer, needed help. Through stag- 
gering complications and embarrassments, which 
were presently to be outstaggered by worse ones, 
Lincoln by the end of March saw his path clear. 
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-country- 
men, and not mine, is the momentous issue of 
civil war." The clew to the path had been in 
those words from the first. The flag of the Union, 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 143 

the little island of loyalty amid the waters of 
secession, was covered by the Charleston bat- 
teries. "Batteries ready to open Wednesday 
or Thursday. What instructions?^^ Thus, on 
April 1st, General Beauregard, at Charleston, 
telegraphed to Jefferson Davis. They had all 
been hoping that Lincoln would give Fort Sumter 
to them and so save their having to take it. Not 
at all. The President of the United States was 
not going to give away property of the United 
States. Instead, the Governor of South Caro- 
lina received a polite message that an attempt 
would be made to supply Fort Sumter with food 
only, and that if this were not interfered with, 
no arms or ammunition should be sent there with- 
out further notice, or in case the fort were 
attacked. Lincoln was leaning backwards, you 
might say, in his patient effort to conciliate. 
And accordingly our transports sailed from New 
York for Charleston with instructions to supply 
Sumter with food alone, unless they should be 
opposed in attempting to carry out their errand. 
This did not suit Jefferson Davis at all ; and, to 
cut it short, at half -past four, on the morning of 
April 12, 1861, there arose into the air from the 



144 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



mortar battery near old Fort Johnson, on the 
south side of the harbor, a bomb-shell, which 
curv^ed high and slow through the dawn, and 
fell upon Fort Sumter, thus starting four years 
of ci^dl war. One week later the Union pro- 
claimed a blockade on the ports of Slave Land. 

Bear each and all of these facts in mind, I beg, 
bear them in mind well, for in the Hght of them 
you can see England clearly, and will have no 
trouble in following the different threads of her 
conduct towards us during this struggle. What 
she did then gave to our ancient grudge against 
her the reddest coat of fresh paint which it had 
received yet — the reddest and the most enduring 
since George III. 

England ran true to form. It is very interest- 
ing to mark this ; very interesting to watch in 
her government and her people the persistent 
and conflicting currents of s^onpathy and antip- 
athy boil up again, just as they had boiled in 
1776. It is equally interesting to watch our 
ancient grudge at work, causing us to remember 
and hug all the ill will she bore us, all the harm 
she did us, and to forget all the good. Roughly 
comparing 1776 with 1861, it was once more the 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 145 



Tories, the aristocrats, the Lord Norths, who 
hoped for our overthrow, while the people of 
England, with certain liberal leaders in Parlia- 
ment, stood our friends. Just as Pitt and Burke 
had spoken for us in our Revolution, so Bright 
and Cobden befriended us now. The parallel 
ceases when you come to the Sovereign. Queen 
Victoria declined to support or recognize Slave 
Land. She stopped the Government and aris- 
tocratic England from forcing war upon us, she 
prevented the French Emperor, Napoleon III, 
from recognizing the Southern Confederacy. We 
shall come to this in its turn. Our Civil War 
set up in England a huge vibration, subjected 
England to a searching test of herself. Nothing 
describes this better than a letter of Henry Ward 
Beecher's, written during the War, after his 
return from addressing the people of England. 

'^My own feelings and judgment underwent a 
great change while I was in England ... I 
was chilled and shocked at the coldness towards 
the North which I everywhere met, and the sym- 
pathetic prejudices in favor of the South. And 
yet everybody was alike condemning slavery 
and praising liberty 



146 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



How could England do this, how with the 
same breath blow cold and hot, how be against 
the North that was fighting the extension of slav- 
ery and yet be against slavery too? Confusing 
at the time, it is clear to-day. Imbedded in Lin- 
coln's first inaugural address lies the clew : he 
said, ^'I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, 
to interfere with the institution of slavery where 
it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do 
so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those 
who elected me did so with full knowledge that 
I had made this and many similar declarations, 
and had never recanted them." Thus Lincoln, 
March 4, 1861. Six weeks later, when we 
went to war, we went, not "to interfere with the 
institution of slavery," but (again in Lincoln's 
words) "to preserve, protect, and defend" the 
Union. This was our slogan, this our fight, this 
was repeated again and again by our soldiers and 
civilians, by our public men and our private citi- 
zens. Can you see the position of those English- 
men who condemned slavery and praised liberty? 
We ourselves said we were not out to abolish 
slavery, we disclaimed any such object, by our 
own words we cut the ground away from them. 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 147 



Not until September 22d of 1862, to take effect 
upon January 1, 1863, did Lincoln proclaim 
emancipation — thus doing what he had said 
twenty-two months before ^^I believe I have no 
lawful right to do.'^ 

That interim of anguish and meditation had 
cleared his sight. Slowly he had felt his way, 
slowly he had come to perceive that the preser- 
vation of the Union and the abolition of slavery 
were so tightly wrapped together as to merge 
and be one and the same thing. But even had 
he known this from the start, known that the 
North's bottom cause, the ending of slavery, 
rested on moral ground, and that moral ground 
outweighs and must forever outweigh what- 
ever of legal argument may be on the other side, 
he could have done nothing. ^^I believe I have 
no lawful right." There were thousands in the 
North who also thus believed. It was only an 
extremist minority who disregarded the Consti- 
tution's acquiescence in slavery and wanted 
emancipation proclaimed at once. Had Lin- 
coln proclaimed it, the North would have split 
in pieces, the South would have won, the Union 
would have perished, and slavery would have 



148 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



remained. Lincoln had to wait until the season 
of anguish and meditation had unblinded thou- 
sands besides himself, and thus had placed behind 
him enough of the North to struggle on to that 
saving of the Union and that freeing of the slave 
which was consummated more than two years 
later by Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. 

But it was during that interim of anguish and 
meditation that England did us most of the harm 
which our memories vaguely but violently treas- 
ure. Until the Emancipation, we gave our 
English friends no public, official grounds for 
their sympathy, and consequently their influence 
over our English enemies was hampered. In- 
stantly after January 1, 1863, that sympathy 
became the deciding voice. Our enemies could 
no longer say to it, ''but Lincoln says himself 
that he doesn't intend to abolish slavery." 

Here are examples of what occurred : To Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist, an English 
sympathizer wrote that three thousand men of 
Manchester had met there and adopted by accla- 
mation an enthusiastic message to Lincoln. These 
men said that they would rather remain unem- 
ployed for twenty years than get cotton from the 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 149 



South at the expense of the slave. A month 
later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner: ^'I 
know nothing in my political experience so strik- 
ing, as a display of spontaneous public action, 
as that of the vast gathering at Exeter Hall 
(in London), when, without one attraction in the 
form of a popular orator, the vast building, its 
minor rooms and passages, and the streets ad- 
joining, were crowded with an enthusiastic audi- 
ence. That meeting has had a powerful effect 
on our newspapers and politicians. It has closed 
the mouths of those who have been advocating 
the side of the South. And I now write to assure 
you that any unfriendly act on the part of our 
Government — no matter which of our aristo- 
cratic parties is in power — towards your cause 
is not to be apprehended. If an attempt were 
made by the Government in any way to commit 
us to the South, a spirit would be instantly aroused 
which would drive that Government from power." 

I lay emphasis at this point upon these instances 
(many more could be given) because it has been 
the habit of most Americans to say that Eng- 
land stopped being hostile to the North as soon 
as the North began to win. In January, 1863, 



150 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



the North had not visibly begun to win, it had 
suffered almost unvaried defeat so far; and the 
battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, where the 
tide turned at last our way, were still six months 
ahead. It was from January 1, 1863, when Lin- 
coln planted our cause firmly and openly on 
abolition ground, that the undercurrent of British 
sympathy surged to the top. The true wonder 
is, that this undercurrent should have been so 
strong all along, that those English sympathizers 
somehow in their hearts should have known 
what we were fighting for more clearly than we 
had been able to see it ourselves. The key to 
this is given in Beecher's letter — it is nowhere 
better given — and to it I must now return. 

^^I soon perceived that my first error was in 
supposing that Great Britain was an impartial 
spectator. In fact, she was morally an actor 
in the conflict. Such were the antagonistic 
influences at work in her own midst, and the 
division of parties, that, in judging American 
affairs she could not help lending sanction to one 
or the other side of her own internal conflicts. 
England was not, then, a judge, sitting calmly 
on the bench to decide without bias ; the case 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 151 



brought before her was her own, in principle, 
and in interest. In taking sides with the North, 
the common people of Great Britain and the labor- 
ing class took sides with themselves in their 
struggle for reformation; while the wealthy 
and the privileged classes found a reason in their 
own political parties and philosophies why they 
should not be too eager for the legitimate govern- 
ment and nation of the United States. 

'^All classes who, at home, were seeking the 
elevation and political enfranchisement of the 
common people, were with us. All who studied 
the preservation of the state in its present un- 
equal distribution of political privileges, sided 
with that section in America that were doing the 
same thing. 

''We ought not to be surprised nor angry that 
men should maintain aristocratic doctrines which 
they believe in fully as sincerely, and more con- 
sistently, than we, or many amongst us do, in 
democratic doctrines. 

''We of all people ought to understand how a 
government can be cold or semi-hostile, while the 
people are friendly with us. For thirty years 
the American Government, in the hands, or 



152 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



under the influence of Southern statesmen, has 
been in a threatening attitude to Europe, and 
actually in disgraceful conflict with all the weak 
neighboring Powers. Texas, Mexico, Central 
America, and Cuba are witnesses. Yet the 
great body of our people in the Middle and North- 
ern States are strongly opposed to all such tend- 
encies." 

It was in a very brief visit that Beecher man- 
aged to see England as she was : a remarkable 
letter for its insight, and more remarkable still 
for its moderation, when you consider that it 
was written in the midst of our Civil War, while 
loyal Americans were not only enraged with Eng- 
land, but wounded to the quick as well. When 
a man can do this — can have passionate con- 
victions in passionate times, and yet keep his 
judgment unclouded, wise, and calm, he serves 
his country well. 

I can remember the rage and the wound. In 
that atmosphere I began my existence. My 
childhood was steeped in it. In our house the 
London Punch was stopped, because of its hostile 
ridicule. I grew to boyhood hearing from my 
elders how England had for years taunted us with 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 153 

our tolerance of slavery while we boasted of 
being the Land of the Free — and then, when we 
arose to abolish slavery, how she jack-knived'' 
and gave aid and comfort to the slave power 
when it had its fingers upon oiu* throat. Many 
of that generation of my elders never wholly got 
over the rage and the wound. They hated all 
England for the sake of less than half England. 
They counted their enemies but never their 
friends. There's nothing unnatural about this, 
nothing rare. On the contrary, it's the usual, 
natural, unjust thing that human nature does 
in times of agony. It's the Henry Ward Beechers 
that are rare. In times of agony the average 
man and woman see nothing but their agony. 
When I look over some of the letters that I re- 
ceived from England in 1915 — letters from 
strangers evoked by a book called The Pentecost 
of Calamity, wherein I had published niy convic- 
tion that the cause of England was righteous, 
the cause of Germany hideous, and our own 
persistent neutrality unworthy — I'm glad I lost 
my temper only once, and replied caustically 
only once. How dreadful (wrote one of my corre- 
spondents) must it be to belong to a nation that 



154 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



was behaving like mine! I retorted (I'm sorry 
for it now) that I could all the more readily 
comprehend Enghsh feeling about our neutrahty, 
because I had known what we had felt when Glad- 
stone spoke at Newcastle and when England let 
the Alabama loose upon us in 1862. Where was 
the good in replying at all? Silence is almost 
always the best reply in these cases. Next 
came a letter from another Enghsh stranger, in 
which the writer announced having just read 
The Pentecost of Calamity. Not a word of friend- 
Hness for what I had said about the righteousness 
of England's cause or my expressed unhappiness 
over the course which our Government had taken 
— nothing but scorn for us all and the hope that 
we should reap our deserts when Germany de- 
feated England and invaded us. Well? What 
of it? Here was a stricken person, writing in 
stress, in a land of desolation, mourning for the 
dead already, waiting for the next who should 
die, a poor, unstrung average person, who had 
not long before read that remark of our Presi- 
dent's made on the morrow of the Lusitania: 
that there is such a thing as being too proud to 
fight; had read during the ensuing weeks those 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 155 



notes wherein we stood committed by our Chief 
Magistrate to a verbal slinking away and sitting 
down under it. Can you wonder? If the mere 
memory of those days of our humiliation stabs 
me even now, I need no one to tell me (though I 
have been told) what England, what France, felt 
about us then, what it must have been like for 
Americans who were in England and France at 
that time. No : the average person in great 
trouble cannot rise above the trouble and survey 
the truth and be just. In English eyes our 
Government — and therefore all of us — failed 
in 1914 — 1915 — 1916 — failed again and again 
— insulted the cause of humanity when we said 
through our President in 1916, the third summer 
of the war, that we were not concerned with either 
the causes or the aims of that conflict. How 
could they remember Hoover, or Robert Bacon, 
or Leonard Wood, or Theodore Roosevelt then, 
any more than we could remember John Bright, 
or Richard Cobden, or the Manchester men in 
the days when the Alabama was sinking the 
merchant vessels of the Union ? 

We remembered Lord John Russell and Lord 
Palmerston in the British Government, and their 



156 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



fellow aristocrats in British society; we remem- 
bered the aristocratic British press — The Times 
notably, because the most powerful — these are 
what we saw, felt, and remembered, because 
they were not with us, and were able to hurt us 
in the days when our friends were not yet able 
to help us. They made welcome the Southerners 
who came over in the interests of the South, they 
listened to the Southern propaganda. Why? 
Because the South was the American version of 
their aristocratic creed. To those who came over 
in the interests of the North and of the Union 
they tiu-ned a cold shoulder, because they repre- 
sented Democracy ; moreover, a Dis-United States 
would prove in commerce a less formidable com- 
petitor. To Captain Bullock, the able and ener- 
getic Southerner who put through in England the 
building and launching of those Confederate 
cruisers which sank our ships and destroyed our 
merchant marine, and to Mason and Shdell, 
the doors of dukes opened pleasantly; Beecher 
and our other emissaries mostly had to dine 
beneath uncoroneted roofs. 

In the pages of Henry Adams, and of Charles 
Francis Adams his brother, you can read of what 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 157 



they, as young men, encountered in London, and 
what they saw their father have to put up with 
there, both from EngHsh society and the Enghsh 
Government. Their father was our new minister 
to England, appointed by Lincoln. He arrived 
just after our Civil War had begun. I have 
heard his sons talk about it familiarly, and it is 
all to be found in their writings. 

Nobody knows how to be disagreeable quite 
so well as the English gentleman, except the 
English lady. They can do it with the nicety 
of a medicine dropper. They can administer 
the precise quantum suff. in every case. In the 
society of English gentlemen and ladies Mr. 
Adams by his official position was obliged to move. 
They left him out as much as they could, but, 
J being the American Minister, he couldn't be left 
out altogether. At their dinners and functions 
he had to hear open expressions of joy at the 
news of Southern victories, he had to receive 
slights both veiled and unveiled, and all this he 
had to bear with equanimity. Sometimes he 
did leave the room; but with dignity and dis- 
cretion. A false step, a ' ^ break, " might have 
led to a request for his recall. He knew that his 



158 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



constant presence, close to the English Govern- 
ment, was vital to our cause. Russell and Palm- 
erston were by turns insolent and shifty, and 
once on the very brink of recognizing the Southern 
Confederacy as an independent nation. Glad- 
stone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech 
at Newcastle, virtually did recognize it. You 
will be proud of Mr. Adams if you read how 
he bore himself and fulfilled his appallingly 
dehcate and difficult mission. He was an 
American who knew how to behave himself, 
and he behaved himself all the time; while 
the EngUsh had a way of turning their behavior 
on and off, like the hot water. Mr. Adams was 
no admirer of ^'shirt-sleeves'^ diplomacy. His 
diplomacy wore a coat. Our experiments in 
" shirt-sleeves " diplomacy fail to show that it ac- 
complishes anything which diplomacy decently 
dressed would not accomphsh more satisfac- 
torily. Upon Mr. Adam,s fell some consequences 
of previous American crudities, of which I shall 
speak later. 

Lincoln had declared a blockade on Southern 
ports before Mr. Adams arrived in London. Upon 
his arrival he found England had proclaimed her 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 159 



neutrality and recognized the belligerency of the 
South. This dismayed Mr. Adams and excited 
the whole North, because feeling ran too high 
to perceive this first act on England's part to 
be really favorable to us ; she could not recognize 
our blockade, which stopped her getting Southern 
cotton, unless she recognized that the South was 
in a state of war with us. Looked at quietly, 
this act of England's helped us and hurt herself, 
for it deprived her of cotton. 

It was not with this, but with the reception 
and treatment of Mr. Adams that the true hos- 
tiUty began. Slights to him were slaps at us, 
sympathy with the South was an active moral 
injury to our cause, even if it was mostly an under- 
tone, politically. Then all of a sudden, some- 
thing that we did ourselves changed the under- 
tone to a loud overtone, and we just grazed Eng- 
land's declaring war on us. Had she done so, 
then indeed it had been all up with us. This 
incident is the comic going-back on our own doc- 
trine of 1812, to which I have alluded above. 

On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles 
Wilkes of the American steam-sloop San Jacinto, 
fired a shot across the bow of the British vessel 



160 A STRAIGHT DEAL 

Trent, stopped her on the high seas, and took 
four passengers off her, and brought them pris- 
oners to Fort Warren, in Boston harbor. Mason 
and SHdell are the two we remember, Confed- 
erate envoys to France and Great Britain. Over 
this the whole North burst into glorious joy. 
Our Secretary of the Navy wrote to Wilkes his 
congratulations. Congress voted its thanks to 
him, governors and judges laureled him with 
oratory at banquets, he was feasted with meat 
and drink all over the place, and, though his 
years were sixty-three, ardent females probably 
rushed forth from throngs and kissed him with 
the purest intentions : heroes have no age. But 
presently the Trent arrived in England, and the 
British Hon was aroused. We had \dolated in- 
ternational law, and insulted the British flag. 
Palmerston wrote us a letter — or Russell, I forget 
which wrote it — a letter that would have left us 
no choice but to fight. But Queen Victoria had to 
sign it before it went. ''My lord," she said, ''you 
must know that I will agree to no paper that 
means war with the United States." So this didn't 
go, but another in its stead, pretty stiff, naturally, 
yet still possible for us to swallow. Some didn't 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 161 



want to swallow even this ; but Lincoln, humor- 
ous and wise, said, "Gentlemen, one war at a 
time;" and so we made due restitution, and 
Messrs. Mason and Slidell went their way to 
France and England, free to bring about action 
against us there if they could manage it. Cap- 
tain Wilkes must have been a good fellow. His 
picture suggests this. England, in her Enghsh 
heart, really liked what he had done, it was in 
its gallant flagrancy so remarkably like her own 
doings — though she couldn't, naturally, per- 
mit such a performance to pass ; and a few years 
afterwards, for his services in the cause of explo- 
ration, her Royal Geographical Society gave him 
a gold medal ! Yes ; the whole thing is comic 
■ — to-day ; for us, to-day, the point of it is, that 
the English Queen saved us from a war with 
England. 

Within a year, something happened that was 
not comic. Lord John Russell, though warned 
and warned, let the Alabama slip away to sea, 
where she proceeded to send our merchant ships 
to the bottom, until the Kearsarge sent her her- 
self to the bottom. She had been built at Liver- 
pool in the face of an English law which no quib- 

M 



162 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



bling could disguise to anybody except to Lord 
John Russell and to those who, Hke him, leaned 
to the South. Ten years later, this leaning cost 
England fifteen million dollars in damages. 

Let us now listen to what our British friends 
were saying in those years before Lincoln issued 
his Emancipation Proclamation. His blockade had 
brought immediate and heavy distress upon many 
English workmen and their famihes. That had 
been April 19, 1861. By September, five sixths of 
the Lancashire cotton-spinners were out of work, 
or working half time. Their starvation and that 
of their wives and children could be stemmed 
by charity alone. I have talked with people 
who saw those thousands in their suffering. Yet 
those thousands bore it. They somehow looked 
through Lincoln's express disavowal of any in- 
tention to interfere with slavery, and saw that 
at bottom our war was indeed against slavery, 
that slavery was behind the Southern camou- 
flage about independence, and behind the North- 
ern slogan about preserving the Union. They 
saw and they stuck. Rarely," writes Charles 
Francis Adams, "in the history of mankind, has 
there been a more creditable exhibition of himaan 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 163 



sympathy." France was likewise damaged by 
our blockade; and Napoleon III. would have 
liked to recognize the South. He established, 
through Maximilian, an empire in Mexico, be- 
hind which lay hostility to our Democracy. 
He wished us defeat ; but he was afraid to move 
without England, to whom he made a succession 
of indirect approaches. These nearly came to 
something towards the close of 1862. It was on 
October 7th that Gladstone spoke at Newcastle 
about Jefferson Davis having made a nation. 
Yet, after all, England didn't budge, and thus 
held Napoleon back. From France in the end 
the South got neither ships nor recognition, in 
spite of his deceitful connivance and desire; 
Napoleon flirted a while with Slidell, but grew 
cold when he saw no chance of English co- 
operation. 

Besides John Bright and Cobden, we had other 
English friends of influence and celebrity : John 
Stuart Mill, Thomas Hughes, Goldwin Smith, 
Leslie Stephen, Robert Gladstone, JFrederic Har- 
rison are some of them. All from the first sup- 
ported us. All from the first worked and spoke 
for us. The Union and Emancipation Society 



164 



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was founded. ''Your Committee/' says its final 
report when the war was ended, ''have issued 
and circulated upwards of four hundred thousand 
books, pamphlets, and tracts . . . and nearly 
five hundred official and pubhc meetings have 
been held ..." The president of this Society, 
]\Ir. Potter, spent thirty thousand dollars in the 
cause, and at a time when times were hard and 
fortunes as well as cotton-spinners in distress 
through our blockade. Another member of the 
Society, Air. Thompson, writes of one of the 
pubhc meetings: "... I addressed a crowded 
assembly of unemployed operatives in the town 
of Heywood, near Manchester, and spoke to them 
for two hours about the Slaveholders' RebeUion. 
They were luiited and vociferous in the expres- 
sion of their willingness to suffer all hardships 
consequent upon a want of cotton, if thereby 
the Uberty of the victims of Southern despotism 
might be promoted. All honor to the half mil- 
hon of our working population in Lancashire, 
Cheshire, and elsewhere, who are bearing with 
heroic fortitude the privation which your war 
has entailed upon them! . . . Their sublime 
resignation, their self -forget fulness, their observ- 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE- 165 

ance of law, their whole-souled love of the cause 
of human freedom, their quick and clear percep- 
tion of the merits of the question between the 
North and the South . . . are extorting the 
admiration of all classes of the community . . 

How much of all this do you ever hear from the 
people who remember the Alabama f 

Strictly in accord with Beecher's vivid summary 
of the true England in our Civil War, are some 
passages of a letter from Mr. John Bigelow, 
who was at that time our Consul-General at 
Paris, and whose impressions, written to our 
Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, on February 
6, 1863, are interesting to compare with what 
Beecher says in that letter, from which I have 
already given extracts. 

''The anti-slavery meetings in England are 
having their effect upon the Government already 
. . . The Paris correspondent of the London 
Post also came to my house on Wednesday even- 
ing ... He says . . . that there are about a 
dozen persons who by their position and influ- 
ence over the organs of public opinion have pro- 
duced all the bad feeling and treacherous con- 
duct of England towards America. They are 



166 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



people who, as members of the Govermnent m 
times past, have been bullied by the U. S. . . . 
they are not entirely ignorant that the class 
who are now trying to overthrow the Government 
were mainly responsible for the brutality, but 
they think we as a nation are disposed to bully, 
and they are disposed to assist in any policy 
that may dismember and weaken us. These 
scars of wounded pride, however, have been 
carefully concealed from the pubUc, who there- 
fore cannot be readily made to see why, when the 
President has distinctly made the issue between 
slave labor and free labor, that England should not 
go with the North. He says these dozen people 
who rule England hate us cordially . . . ^' 

There were more than a dozen, a good many 
more, as we know from Charles and Henry Adams. 
But read once again the last paragraph of Beecher's^ 
letter, and note how it corresponds with what 
Mr. Bigelow says about the feehng which our 
Government (for thirty years ''in the hands or 
under the influence of Southern statesmen") 
had raised against us by its bad manners to Euro- 
pean governments. This was the harvest sown 
by shirt-sleeves diplomacy and reaped by Mr, 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 167 



Adams in 1861. Only seven years before, we 
had gratuitously offended four countries at once. 
Three of our foreign ministers (two of them from 
the South) had met at Ostend and later at Aix 
in the interests of extending slavery, and there, 
in a joint manifesto, had ordered Spain to sell 
us Cuba, or we would take Cuba by force. One 
of the three was our minister to Spain. Spain 
had received him courteously as the representa- 
tive of a nation with whom she was at peace. 
It was like ringing the doorbell of an acquaint- 
ance, being shown into the parlor and telling him 
he must sell you his spoons or you would snatch 
them. This doesn't incline your neighbor to 
like you. But, as has been said, Mr. Adams was 
an American who did know how to behave, and 
thereby served us well in our hour of need. 

We remember the Alabama and our English 
enemies, we forget Bright, and Cobden, and all 
our English friends; but Lincoln did not forget 
them. When a young man, a friend of Bright's, 
an Englishman, had been caught here in a plot 
to seize a vessel and make her into another 
Alabama, John Bright asked mercy for him ; and 
here are Lincoln's words in consequence : 



168 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



Whereas one Rubery was convicted on or 
about the twelfth day of October, 1863, m the 
Circuit Court of the United States for the District 
of Cahfornia, of engaging in, and giving aid and 
comfort to the existing rebelhon against the 
Government of this Country, and sentenced to 
ten years' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of 
ten thousand dollars ; 

^'And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is of 
the immature age of twenty years, and of highly 
respectable parentage ; 

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is a 
subject of Great Britain, and his pardon is desired 
by John Bright, of England ; 

"Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham 
Lincoln, President of the United States of America, 
these and divers other considerations me there- 
unto moving, and especially as a pubhc mark 
of the esteem held by the United States of America 
for the high character and steady friendship of 
the said John Bright, do hereby grant a pardon 
to the said Alfred Rubery, the same to begin 
and take effect on the twentieth day of January 
1864, on condition that he leave the country within 
thirty days from and after that date.'' 



ON THE EAGGED EDGE 169 



Thus Lincoln, because of Bright; and because 
of a word from Bright to Charles Sumner about 
the starving cotton-spinners, Americans sent 
from New York three ships with flour for those 
faithful Enghsh friends of ours. 

And then, at Geneva in 1872, England paid 
us for what the Alabama had done. This Court 
of Arbitration grew slowly ; suggested first by Mr. 
Thomas Balch to Lincoln, who thought the mil- 
lennium wasn't quite at hand but favored ^'airing 
the idea." The idea was not aired easily. Cob- 
den would have brought it up in Parliament, but 
illness and death overtook him. The idea found 
but few other friends. At last Horace Greeley 
**aired'' it in his paper. On October 23, 1863, 
Mr. Adams said to Lord John Russell, ^'I am 
directed to say that there is no fair and equitable 
form of conventional arbitrament or reference 
to which the United States will not be willing to 
submit." This, some two years later, Russell 
recalled, saying in reply to a statement of our 
grievances by Adams: ^'It appears to Her Ma- 
jesty's Government that there are but two ques- 
tions by which the claim of compensation could 
be tested ; the one is, Have the British Govern- 



170 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



ment acted with due diligence, or, in other words, 
in good faith and honesty, in the maintenance 
of the neutrality they proclaimed? The other 
is, Have the law officers of the Crown properly 
understood the foreign enhstment act, when they 
decHned, in June 1862 to advise the detention 
and seizure of the Alabama, and on other occa- 
sions when they were asked to detain other ships, 
building or fitting in British ports? It appears 
to Her Majesty's Government that neither of 
these questions could be put to a foreign govern- 
ment with any regard to the dignity and char- 
acter of the British Crown and the British Nation. 
Her Majesty's Government are the sole guard- 
ians of their own honor. They cannot admit 
that they have acted with bad faith in main- 
taining the neutrahty they professed. The law 
officers of the Crown must be held to be better 
interpreters of a British statute than any foreign 
Government can be presumed to be . . ." He 
consented to a commission, but drew the line at 
any probing of England's good faith. 

We persisted. In 1868, Lord Westbury, Lord 
High Chancellor, declared in the House of Lords 
that 'Hhe animus with which the neutral powers 
acted was the only true criterion." 



ON THE RAGGED EDGE 171 



This is the test which we asked should be 
appHed. We quoted British remarks about us, 
Gladstone, for example, as evidence of unfriendly 
and insincere animus on the part of those at 
the head of the British Government. 

Replying to our pressing the point of animus, 
the British Government reasserted Russell's re- 
fusal to recognize or entertain any question of 
England's good faith: first, because it would 
be inconsistent with the self-respect which every 
government is bound to feel. ..." In Mr. 
John Bassett Moore's History of International 
Arbitration, Vol. I, pages 496-497, or in papers 
relating to the Treaty of Washington, Vol. II, 
Geneva Arbitration, page 204 . . . Part 1, In- 
troductory Statement, you will find the whole 
of this. What I give here suffices to show the 
position we ourselves and England took about 
the Alabama case. She backed down. Her good 
faith was put in issue, and she paid our direct 
claims. She ate humble pie." We had to eat 
humble pie in the affair of the Trent. It has 
been done since. It is not pleasant, but it may 
be beneficial. 

Such is the story of the true England and the 



172 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



true America in 1861 ; the divided North with 
which Lincoln had to deal, the divided England 
where our many friends could do httle to check 
our influential enemies, until Lincoln came out 
plainly against slavery. I have had to compress 
much, but I have omitted nothing material, 
of which I am aware. The facts would embarrass 
those who determine to assert that England was 
our undivided enemy during our Civil War, if 
facts ever embarrassed a complex. Those afflicted 
with the complex can keep their eyes upon the 
Alabama and the London Times, and avert them 
from Bright, and Cobden, and the cotton-spin- 
ners, and the Union and Emancipation Society, 
and Queen Victoria. But to any reader of this 
whose complex is not incurable, or who has none, 
I will put this question : What opinion of the 
brains of any Englishman would you have if 
he formed his idea of the United States exclu- 
sively from the newspapers of William Randolph 
Hearst? 



CHAPTER XIII 
BENEFITS FORGOT 



CHAPTER XIII 



BENEFITS FOEGOT 

In our next war, our war with Spain in 1898, 
England saved us from Germany. She did it 
from first to last ; her position was unmistakable, 
and every determining act of hers was as our 
friend. The service that she rendered us in warn- 
ing Germany to keep out of it, was even greater 
than her suggestion of our Monroe doctrine in 
1823; for in 1823 she put us on guard against 
meditated, but remote, assault from Europe, 
while in 1898 she actively averted a serious and 
imminent peril. As the threat of her fleet had 
obstructed Napoleon in 1803, and the Holy Alli- 
ance in 1823, so in 1898 it blocked the Kaiser. 
Late in that year, when it was all over, the dis- 
appointed and baffled Kaiser wrote to a friend of 
Joseph Chamberlain, ^'If I had had a larger fleet 
I would have taken Uncle Sam by the scruff of 
the neck." Have you ever read what our own 

175 



176 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



fleet was like in those days? Or our Army? 
Lucky it was for us that we had to deal only with 
Spain. And even the Spanish fleet would have 
been a much graver opponent in Manila Bay, 
but for Lord Cromer. On its way from Spain 
through the Suez Canal a formidable part of 
Spain's navy stopped to coal at Port Said. There 
is a law about the coaling of belhgerent war- 
ships in neutral ports. Lord Cromer could have 
construed that law just as well against us. His 
construction brought it about that those Spanish 
ships couldn't get to Manila Bay in time to take 
part against Admiral Dewey. The Spanish War 
revealed that our Navy could hit eight times 
out of a hundred, and was in other respects un- 
prepared and utterly inadequate to cope ^dth a 
first-class power. In consequence of this, and the 
criticisms of our Navy Department, which Ad- 
miral Sims as a young man had written, Roosevelt 
took the steps he did in his first term. Three 
tickhsh times in that Spanish War England stood 
our friend against Germany. Wlien it broke 
out, German agents approached Mr. Balfour, 
proposing that England join in a European com- 
bination in Spain's favor. Mr. Balfour's refusal 



BENEFITS FORGOT 



177 



is common knowledge, except to the monomaniac 
with his complex. Next came the action of Lord 
Cromer, and finally that moment in Manila 
Bay when England took her stand by our side 
and Germany saw she would have to fight us 
both, if she fought at all. 

If you saw any German or French papers at 
the time of our troubles with Spain, you saw 
undisguised hostility. If you have talked with 
any American who was in Paris during that April 
of 1898, your impression will be more vivid still. 
There was an outburst of European hate for us. 
Germany, France, and Austria all looked expect- 
antly to England — and England disappointed 
their expectations. The British Press was as 
much for us as the French and German press 
were hostile; the London Spectator said: ^^We 
are not, and we do not pretend to be, an agree- 
able people, but when there is trouble in the 
family, we know where our hearts are.'' 

In those same days (somewhere about the third 
week in April, 1898), at the British Embassy in 
Washington, occurred a scene of significance 
and interest, which has probably been told less 
often than that interview between Mr. Balfour 

N 



178 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



and the Kaiser's emissary in London. The 
British Ambassador was standing at his window, 
looking out at the German Embassy, across the 
street. With him was a member of his diplo- 
matic household. The two watched what was 
happening. One by one, the representatives 
of various European nations were entering the 
door of the German Embassy. ^'Do you see 
them?" said the Ambassador's companion; 
^Hhey'U all be in there soon. There. That's 
the last of them." ^'I didn't notice the French 
Ambassador." '^Yes, he's gone in, too." '^I'm 
surprised at that. I'm sorry for that. I didn't 
think he would be one of them," said the British 
Ambassador. ''Now, I'll tell you what. They'll 
all be coming over here in a httle while. I want 
you to wait and be present." Shortly this pre- 
diction was verified. Over from the German 
Embassy came the whole company on a visit 
to the British Ambassador, that he might add 
his signature to a document to which they had 
affixed theirs. He read it quietly. We may 
easily imagine its purport, since we know of 
the meditated European coalition against us at 
the time of our war with Spain. Then the British 



BENEFITS FORGOT 



179 



Ambassador remarked: ^'I have no orders from 
my Government to sign any such document as 
that. And if I did have, I should resign my post 
rather than sign it." A pause : The company 
fell silent. ''Then what will your Excellency 
do?" inquired one visitor. ''If you will all do 
me the honor of coming back to-morrow, I shall 
have another document ready which all of us 
can sign." That is what happened to the Euro- 
pean coalition at this end. 

Some few years later, that British Ambassador 
came to die ; and to the British Embassy repaired 
Theodore Roosevelt. "Would it be possible 
for us to arrange," he said, "a funeral more hon- 
ored and marked than the United States has 
ever accorded to any one not a citizen ? I should 
like it. And," he suddenly added, shaking his 
fist at the German Embassy over the way, "I'd 
like to grind all their noses in the dirt." 

Confronted with the awkward fact that Britain 
was almost unanimously with us, from Mr. Bal- 
four down through the British press to the British 
people, those nations whose ambassadors had 
paid so unsuccessful a call at the British Em- 
bassy had to give it up. Their coalition never 



180 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



came off. Such a thing couldn't come off with- 
out England, and England said No. 

Next, Lord Cromer, at Port Said, stretched out 
the arm of international law, and laid it upon the 
Spanish fleet. Belligerents may legally take coal 
enough at neutral ports to reach their nearest 
'^home port." That Spanish fleet was on its 
way from Spain to Manila through the Suez 
Canal. It could have reached there, had Lord 
Cromer allowed it coal enough to make the 
nearest home port ahead of it — Manila. But 
there was a home port behind it, still nearer, 
namely, Barcelona. He let it take coal enough 
to get back to Barcelona. Thus, England again 
stepped in. 

The third time was in Manila Bay itself, after 
Dewey's victory, and while he was in occupation 
of the place. Once more the Kaiser tried it, not 
discouraged by his failure with Mr. Balfour and 
the British Government. He desired the Phihp- 
pines for himself ; we had not yet acquired them ; 
we were policing them, superintending the harbor, 
administering whatever had fallen to us from 
Spain's defeat. The Kaiser sent, under Admiral 
Diedrich, a squadron stronger than Dewey's. 



BENEFITS FORGOT 



181 



Dewey indicated where the German was to anchor. 
^'I am here by the order of his Majesty the Ger- 
man Emperor/' said Diedrich, and chose his own 
place to anchor. He made it quite plain in other 
ways that he was taking no orders from America. 
Dewey, so report has it, at last told him that 
"ii he wanted a fight he could have it at the 
drop of the hat." Then it was that the German 
called on the English Admiral, Chichester, who 
was likewise at hand, anchored in Manila Bay. 
^^What would you do," inquired Diedrich, "in 
the event of trouble between Admiral Dewey and 
myself?" '^That is a secret known only to 
Admiral Dewey and me," said the Englishman. 
Plainer talk could hardly be. Diedrich, though 
a German, understood it. He returned to his 
flagship. What he saw next morning was the 
British cruiser in a new place, interposed between 
Dewey and himself. Once more, he understood; 
and he and his squadron sailed off ; and it was 
soon after this incident that the disappointed 
Kaiser wrote that, if only his fleet had been 
larger, he would have taken us by the scruff of 
the neck. 

Tell these things to the next man you hear 



182 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



talking about George III or the Alabama. You 
may meet him in front of a bulletin board, or in 
a drawing-room. He is amongst us ever^^here, 
in the street and in the house. He may be a 
paid propagandist or merely a silly ignorant 
puppet. But whatever he is, he will not find 
much to say in response, unless it be vain, sterile 
chatter. True come-back will fail him as it 
failed that man by the bulletin board who asked, 
^^What is England doing, anyhow?" and his 
neighbor answered, ''Her fleet's keeping the 
Kaiser out of your front yard.'' 



CHAPTER XIV 
ENGLAND THE SLACKER! 



CHAPTER XIV 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER ! 

What did England do in the war, anyhow ? 

Let us have these disregarded facts also. From 
the shelves of history I have pulled down and dis- 
played the facts which our school textbooks 
have suppressed ; I have told the events wherein 
England has stood our timely friend throughout 
a century" ; events which our implanted prejudice 
leads us to ignore, or to forget; events which 
show that any one who says England is our 
hereditary enemy might just about as well say 
twice two is five. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow ? 

They go on asking it. The propagandists, the 
prompted puppets, the paid parrots of the press, 
go on saying these eight senseless words because 
they are easy to say, since the man who can 
answer them is generally not there : to every 
man who is a responsible master of facts we have 
— well, how many ? — irresponsible shouters in 

185 



186 



'A STRAIGHT DEAL 



this country. What is your experience? How 
often is it your luck — as it was mine in front 
of the bulletin board — to see a fraud or a fool 
promptly and satisfactorily put in his place? 
Make up your mind that wherever you hear 
any person whatsoever, male or female, clean 
or unclean, dressed in jeans, or dressed in silks 
and laces, inquire what England did in the war, 
anyhow?" such person either shirks knowledge, or 
else is a fraud or a fool. Tell them what the man 
said ui the street about the Kaiser and our front 
yard, but don't stop there. Tell them that in May, 
1918, England was sending men of fifty and boys 
of eighteen and a half to the front ; that lq August, 
1918, every third male available between those 
years was fighting, that eight and a half miUion 
men for army and na^^y were raised by the British 
Empire, of which Ireland's share was two and 
three tenths per cent, Wales three and seven 
tenths, Scotland's eight and three tenths, and 
England's more than sixty per cent; and that 
this, taken proportionately to our greater popu- 
lation would have amounted to about thirteen 
million Americans. When the war started, the 
British Empire maiatained three soldiers out of 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER I 187 



every 2600 of the population; her entire army, 
regular establishment, reserve and territorial 
forces, amounted to seven hundred thousand 
men. Our casualties were three hundred and 
twenty-two thousand, one hundred and eighty- 
two. The casualties in the British Army were 
three million, forty-nine thousand, nine hundred 
and seventy-one — a milHon more than we sent 
— and of these six hundred and fifty-eight thou- 
sand, seven hundred and four, were killed. Of her 
Navy, thirty-three thousand three hundred and 
sixty-one were killed, six thousand four hundred 
and five wounded and missing; of her merchant 
marine fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty- 
one were killed; a total of forty-eight thousand 
killed — or ten per cent of all in active service. 
Some of those of the merchant marine who escaped 
drowning through torpedoes and mines went back 
to sea after being torpedoed five, six, and seven 
times. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow? 
Through four frightful years she fought with 
splendor, she suffered with splendor, she held 
on with splendor. The second battle of Ypres is 
but one drop in the sea of her epic courage ; yet 



188 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



it would fill full a canto of a poem. So spent was 
Britain's single line, so worn and thin, that after 
all the men available were brought, gaps remained. 
No more ammunition was coming to these men, 
the last rounds had been served. Wet through, 
heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days 
to prevent sleep. Many came at last to sleep 
standing ; and being jogged awake w^hen officers of 
the hne passed do-^m the trenches, would salute 
and instantly be asleep again. On the fourth day, 
with the Kaiser come to watch them crumble, 
three Unes of Huns, wave after wave of Germany's 
picked troops, fell and broke upon this single line 
of British — and it held. The Kaiser, had he 
known of the exhausted ammunition and the 
mounded dead, could have walked unarmed to 
the Channel. But he never knew. 

Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one 
with a compound fracture of the thigh had himseK 
propped up, and thus all day worked on the 
wounded at the front. He knew it meant death 
for Mm. The day over, he let them carry him to 
the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, he died. 
Thus through fom' frightful years, the British met 
their duty and their death. 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER I 189 



There is the great story of the little penny 
steamers of the Thames — a story lost amid 
the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? 
Who will make this drop of perfect valor shine 
in prose or verse for future eyes to see ? Imagine 
a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country 
needed her, starting for San Francisco around 
Cape Horn, and getting there. Some ten or 
eleven penny steamers under their own steam 
started from the Thames down the Channel, 
across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and 
through the submarined Mediterranean for the 
River Tigris. Boats of shallow draught were 
urgently needed on the River Tigris. Four or 
five reached their destination. Where are the 
rest? 

What did England do in the war, anyhow? 
During 1917-1918 Britain's armies held the 
enemy in three continents and on six fronts, and 
cooperated with her Allies on two more fronts. 
Her dead, those six hundred and fifty-eight 
thousand dead, lay by the Tigris, the Zambesi, 
the iEgean, and across the world to Flanders' 
fields. Between March 21st and April 17th, 
1918, the Huns in their drive used 127 divisions, 



190 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



and of these 102 were concentrated against the 
British. That was in Flanders. Britain, at the 
same time she was fighting in Flanders, had also 
at various times shared in the fighting in Russia, 
Kiaochau, New Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, 
Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Cameroons, Togo- 
land, East Africa, South West Africa, Saloniki, 
Aden, Persia, and the northwest frontier of India. 
Britain cleared twelve hundred thousand square 
miles of the enemy in German colonies. While 
fighting in Mesopotamia, her soldiers were re- 
constructing at the same time. They reclaimed 
and cultivated more than 1100 square miles of 
land there, which produced in consequence enough 
food to save two milHon tons of shipping an- 
nually for the AlUes. In Palestine and Mesopo- 
tamia alone, British troops in 1917 took 23,590 
prisoners. In 1918, in Palestine from Septem- 
ber 18th to October 7th, they took 79,000 pris- 
oners. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow? 
With French's contemptible little army" 
she saved France at the start — but I'll skip 
that — except to mention that one division lost 
10,000 out of 12,000 men, and 350 out of 400 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER! 191 



officers. At Zeebrugge and Ostend — do not 
forget the Vindictive — she dealt with sub- 
marines in April and May, 1918 — but I'll skip 
that ; I cannot set down all that she did, either 
at the start, or nearing the finish, or at any par- 
ticular moment during those four years and three 
months that she was helping to hold Germany 
off from the throat of the world ; it would make 
a very thick book. But I am giving you enough, 
I think, wherewith to answer the ignorant, and 
the frauds, and the fools. Tell them that from 
1916 to 1918 Great Britain increased her tillage 
area by four milhon acres : wheat 39 per cent, 
barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50 — in spite of the 
shortage of labor. She used wounded soldiers, 
college boys and girls, boy scouts, refugees, and 
she produced the biggest grain crop in fifty years. 
She started fourteen hundred thousand new war 
gardens ; most of those who worked them had 
worked already a long day in a munition factory. 
These devoted workers increased the potato crop 
in 1917 by three million tons — and thus released 
British provision ships to carry our soldiers across. 
In that Boston speech which one of my correspond- 
ents referred to, our Secretary of the Navy did 



192 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



not mention this. Mention it yourself. And 
tell them about the boy scouts and the women. 
Fifteen thousand of the boy scouts joined the 
colors, and over fifty thousand of the younger 
members served in various ways at home. 

Of England's women seven million were en- 
gaged in work on munitions and other necessaries 
and apparatus of war. The terrible test of that 
second battle of Ypres, to which I have made 
brief allusion above, wrought an industrial revolu- 
tion in the manufacture of shells. The energy of 
production rose at a rate which may be indicated 
by two or three comparisons : In 1917 as many 
heavy howitzer shells were turned out in a single 
day as in the whole first year of the war, as many 
medium shells in five days, and as many field- 
gun shells in eight days. Or in other words, 45 
times as many field-gun shells, 73 times as many 
medium, and 365 times as many heavy howitzer 
shells, were turned out in 1917 as in the first year 
of the war. These shells were manufactured in 
buildings totaling fifteen miles in length, forty feet 
in breadth, with more than ten thousand machine 
tools driven by seventeen miles of shafting with 
an energy of twenty-five thousand horse-power 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER I 193 



and a weekly output of over ten thousand tons' 
weight of projectiles — all this largely worked 
by the women of England. While the fleet 
had increased its personnel from 136,000 to about 
400,000, and 2,000,000 men by July, 1915, had 
voluntarily enHsted in the army before England 
gave up her birthright and accepted compulsory 
service, the women of England left their ordinary 
Hves to fabricate the necessaries of war. They 
worked at home while their husbands, brothers, 
and sons fought and died on six battle fronts 
abroad — six hundred and fifty-eight thousand 
died, remember; do you remember the number 
of Americans killed in action ? — less than thirty- 
six thousand ; — those English women worked on, 
seven millions of them at least, on milk carts, 
motor-busses, elevators, steam engines, and in 
making ammunition. Never before had any 
woman worked on more than 150 of the 500 
different processes that go to the making of mu- 
nitions. They now handled T. N. T., and ful- 
minate of mercury, more deadly still; helped 
build guns, gun carriages, and three-and-a-half 
ton army camions; worked overhead travehng 
cranes for moving the boilers of battleships; 
o 



194 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



turned lathes, made every part of an aeroplane. 

And who were these seven milHon women? 
The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter 
of a general won distinction in advanced munition 
work. The only daughter of an old Army family 
broke down after a year's work in a base hospital 
in France, was ordered six months' rest at home, 
but after two months entered a munition factory 
as an ordinary employee and after nine months' 
work had lost but five minutes working time. 
The mother of seven enhsted sons went into 
munitions not to be behind them in serving 
England, and one of them wrote her she was 
probably killing more Germans than any of the 
family. The stewardess of a torpedoed passenger 
ship was among the few survivors. Reaching 
land, she got a job at a capstan lathe. Those 
were the seven milUon women of England — 
daughters of dukes, torpedoed stewardesses, 
and everything between. 

Seven hundred thousand of these were engaged 
on munition work proper. They did from 60 
to 70 per cent of all the machine work on shells, 
fuses, and trench warfare supplies, and 1450 pf 
them were trained mechanics to the Royal Fly- 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER 1 195 



ing Corps. They were employed upon practically 
every operation in factory, in foundry, in labora- 
tory, and chemical works, of which they were 
physically capable; in making of gauges, forging 
billets, making fuses, cartridges, bullets — ^Mook 
what they can do," said a foreman, 'ladies from 
homes where they sat about and were waited 
upon.'^ They also made optical glass; drilled 
and tapped in the shipyards; renewed electric 
wires and fittings, wound armatures; lacquered 
guards for lamps and radiator fronts; repaired 
junction and section boxes, fire control instru- 
ments, automatic searchlights. ^^We can hardly 
believe our eyes,'' said another foreman, '^when 
we see the heavy stuff brought to and from the 
shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before 
the war it was all carted by horses and men. 
The girls do the job all right, though, and the 
only thing they ever complain about is that 
their toes get cold." They worked without 
hesitation from twelve to fourteen hours a day, 
or a night, for seven days a week, and with the 
voluntary sacrifice of public holidays. 

That is not all, or nearly all, that the women 
of England did — I skip their welfare work, 



196 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



recreation work, nursing — but it is enough 
wherewith to answer the ignorant, or the fraud, 
or the fool. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow ? 

On August 8, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 
100,000 volunteers. He had them within fourteen 
days. In the first week of September 175,000 
men enrolled, 30,000 in a single day. Eleven 
months later, two milhon had enlisted. Ten 
months later, five milhon and forty-one thousand 
had voluntarily enrolled in the Army and Navy. 

In 1914 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air 
Service 64 aeroplanes and 800 airmen. In 1917 
she had many thousand aeroplanes and 42,000 
airmen. In her Royal Flying Corps she had in 
1914, 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917, several 
thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. 
In the first nine months of 1917 British airmen 
brought down 876 enemy machines and drove 
down 759 out of control. From July, 1917, to 
June, 1918, 4102 enemy machines were destroyed 
or brought down \\dth a loss of 1213 machines. 

Besides financing her own war costs she had by 
October, 1917, loaned eight hundred milhon dollars 
to the Dominions and five bilHon five hundred 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER I 197 



million to the Allies. She raised five billion in 
thirty days. In the first eight months of 1918 
she contributed to the various forms of war loan 
at the average rate of one hundred and twenty-four 
milhon, eight hundred thousand a week. 

Is that enough? Enough to show what Eng- 
land did in the War? No, it is not enough for 
such people as continue to ask what she did. 
Nothing would suffice these persons. During 
the earher stages of the War it was possible that 
the question could be asked honestly — though 
never intelUgently — because the facts and figures 
were not at that time always accessible. They 
were still piUng up, they were scattered about, 
mention of them was incidental and fugitive, 
they could be missed by anybody who was not 
diligently alert to find them. To-day it is quite 
otherwise. The facts and figures have been com- 
piled, arranged, pubhshed in accessible and con- 
venient form ; therefore to-day, the man or woman 
who persists in asking what England did in the 
war is not honest but dishonest or mentally 
spotted, and does not want to be answered. 
They don't want to know. The question is 
merely a camouflage of their spite, and were 



198 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



every item given of the gigantic and magnificent 
contribution that England made to the defeat of 
the Kaiser and all his works, it would not stop 
their evil mouths. Not for them am I here setting 
forth a part of what England did; it is for the 
convenience of the honest American, who does 
want to know, that my collection of facts is 
made from the various sources which he may not 
have the time or the means to look up for himself. 
For his benefit I add some particulars concerning 
the British Navy which kept the Kaiser out of 
our front yard. ^ 

Admiral Mahan said in his book — and he was 
an American of whose knowledge and wisdom 
Congress seems to have known nothing and cared 
less — '^Why do English innate pohtical concep- 
tions of popular representative government, of the 
balance of law and Uberty, prevail in North Amer- 
ica from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific? Because the 
command of the sea at the decisive era belonged 
to Great Britain." We have seen that the deci- 
sive era was when Napoleon's mouth watered 
for Louisiana, and when England took her stand 
behind the Momoe Doctrine. 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER I 199 



Admiral Sims said in the second installment of 
his narrative The Victory at Sea, published 
in The WoMs Work for October, 1919, at page 
619: ^^ . . Let us suppose for a moment that an 
earthquake, or some other great natural disturb- 
ance, had engulfed the British fleet at Scapa 
Flow. The world would then have been at 
Germany's mercy and all the destroyers the 
AlHes could have put upon the sea would have 
availed them nothing, for the German battleships 
and battle cruisers could have sunk them or 
driven them into their ports. Then Allied com- 
merce would have been the prey, not only of the 
submarines, which could have operated with the 
utmost freedom, but of the German surface 
craft as well. In a few weeks the British food 
suppUes would have been exhausted. There 
would have been an early end to the soldiers and 
munitions which Britain was constantly sending 
to France. The United States could have sent 
no forces to the Western front, and the result 
would have been the surrender which the Allies 
themselves, in the spring of 1917, regarded as 
a not remote possibility. America would then 
have been compelled to face the German power 



200 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



alone, and to face it long before we had had an 
opportunity to assemble our resources and equip 
our armies. The world was preserved from all 
these calamities because the destroyer and the 
convoy solved the problem of the submarines, and 
because back of these agencies of victory lay 
Admiral Beatty's squadrons, holding at arm's 
length the German surface ships while these 
comparatively fragile craft were saving the Hber- 
ties of the world.'' 

Yes. The High Seas Fleet of Germany, costing 
her one billion five hundred milUon dollars, was 
bottled up. Five milhon five hundred thousand 
tons of German shipping and one milhon tons of 
Austrian shipping were driven ojff the seas or 
captured; oversea trade and oversea colonies 
were cut off. Two milhon oversea Huns of fight- 
ing age were hindered from joining the enemy. 
Ocean conamerce and communication were stopped 
for the Huns and secured to the Alhes. In 1916, 
2100 mines were swept up and 89 mine sweepers 
lost. These mine sweepers and patrol boats 
numbered 12 in 1914, and 3300 by 1918. To 
patrol the seas British ships had to steam eight 
milUon miles in a single month. During the four 



ENGLAND THE SLACKER 1 201 



years of the war they transported oversea more 
than thirteen miUion men (losing but 2700 through 
enemy action) as well as transporting two million 
horses and mules, five hundred thousand vehicles, 
twenty-five million tons of explosives, fifty-one 
million tons of oil and fuel, one hundred and thirty 
milHon tons of food and other materials for the 
use of the Allies. In one month three hundred 
and fifty-five thousand men were carried from 
England to France. 

It was after our present Secretary of the Navy, 
in his speech in Boston to which allusion has been 
made, had given oiu" navy all and the British 
navy none of the credit of conveying our soldiers 
overseas, that Admiral Sims repaired the singular 
obUvion of the Secretary. We Americans should 
know the truth, he said. We had not been too 
accurately informed. We did not seem to have 
been told by anybody, for instance, that of the 
five thousand anti-submarine craft operating 
day and night in the infested waters, we had 160, 
or 3 per cent; that of the million and a half 
troops which had gone over from here in a few 
months. Great Britain brought over two thirds 
and escorted half. 



202 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



''I would like American papers to pay particular 
attention to the fact that there are about 5000 
anti-submarine craft in the ocean to-day, cutting 
out mines, escorting troop ships, and making it 
possible for us to go ahead and win this war. 
They can do this because the British Grand Fleet 
is so powerful that the German High Seas Fleet 
has to stay at home. The British Grand Fleet is 
the foundation stone of the cause of the whole of 
the AUies." 

Thus Admiral Sims. 

That is part of what England did in the war. 

Note. — The author expresses thanks and acknowledg- 
ment to Pearson's Magazine for pei-mission to use the passages 
quoted from the articles by Admiral Sims. 



CHAPTER XV 
RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 



I 



CHAPTER XV 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 

It may have been ten years ago, it may have 
been fifteen — and just how long it was before 
the war makes no matter — that I received an 
invitation to join a society for the promotion of 
more friendly relations between the United States 
and England. 

'^No, indeed," I said to myself. 

Even as I read the note, hostility rose in me. 
Refusal sprang to my lips before my reason had 
acted at all. I remembered George III. I 
remembered the Civil War. The ancient grudge, 
the anti-English complex, had been instantly set 
fermenting in me. Nothing could better dis- 
close its lurking persistence than my virtually 
automatic exclamation, ^^No, indeed!" I knew 
something about England's friendly acts, about 
Venezuela, and Manila Bay, and Edmund Burke, 
and John Bright, and the Queen, and the Lan- 
cashire cotton spinners. And more than this 

205 



206 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



historic knowledge, I knew living English people, 
men and women, among whom I counted dear 
and even beloved friends. I knew also, just as 
well as Admiral Mahan knew, and other Americans 
by the hundreds of thousands have known and 
know at this moment, that all the best we have 
and are — law, ethics, love of liberty — all of it 
came from England, grew in England first, ripened 
from the seed of which we are merely one great 
harvest, planted here by England. And yet I 
instantly exclaimed, ''No, indeed!'' 

Well, having been inflicted with the anti- 
English complex myself, I understand it all the 
better in others, and am begging them to counter- 
act it as I have done. You will recollect that I 
said at the outset of these observations that, as I 
saw it, our prejudice was founded upon three 
causes fairly separate, although they often melted 
together. With two of these causes I have now 
dealt — the school histories, and certain acts and 
policies of England's throughout our relations 
with her. The third cause, I said, was certain 
traits of the EngHsh and ourselves which have 
produced personal friction. An American does 
or says something which angers an Englishman, 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 207 



who thereupon goes about thinking and saying, 
Those insufferable Yankees!" An Enghshman 
does or says something which angers an American, 
who thereupon goes about thinking and saying, 
''To Hell with England !" Each makes the well- 
nigh universal — but none the less perfectly 
ridiculous — blunder of damning a whole people 
because one of them has rubbed him the wrong 
way. Nothing could show up more forcibly and 
vividly this human weakness for generalizing from 
insufficient data, than the incident in London 
streets which I promised to tell you in full when 
we should reach the time for it. The time is now. 

In a hospital at no great distance from San 
Francisco, a wounded American soldier said to 
one who sat beside him, that never would he go 
to Europe to fight anybody again — except the 
English. Them he would like to fight; and to 
the astonished visitor he told his reason. He, it 
appeared, was one of our Americans who marched 
through London streets on that day when the 
eyes of London looked for the first time upon the 
Yankees at last arrived to bear a hand to England 
and her Allies. From the mob came a certain 
taunt : 



208 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



^^You silly ass." 

It was, as you will observe, an unflattering 
interpretation of our national initials, U. S. A. 
Of course it was enough to make a proper American 
doughboy entirely ''hot under the collar." To 
this reading of our national initials our national 
readiness retorted in kind at an early date: 
A. E. F. meant After England Failed. But why, 
months and months afterwards, when everything 
was over, did that fooHsh doughboy in the 
hospital hug this lone thing to his memory? It 
was the act of an unthinking few. Didn't he 
notice what the rest of London was doing that 
day? Didn't he remember that she flew the 
Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes together 
from every symbolic pinnacle of creed and govern- 
ment that rose above her continent of streets and 
dwelhngs to the sky? Couldn't he feel that Eng- 
land, his old enemy and old mother, bowed 
and stricken and struggUng, was opening her arms 
to him wide? She's a person who hides her tears 
even from herself ; but it seems to me that, with 
a drop of imagination and half a drop of thought, 
he might have discovered a year and a half after 
a few street roughs had insulted him, that they 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 209 



were not all England. With two drops of thought 
it might even have ultimately struck him that 
here we came, late, very late, indeed, only just in 
time, from a country untouched, unafflicted, un- 
bombed, safe, because of England's ships, to tired, 
broken, bleeding England; and that the sight 
of us, so jaunty, so fresh, so innocent of suffer- 
ing and bereavement, should have been for a 
thoughtless moment galling to unthinking brains ? 

I am perfectly sure that if such considerations 
as these were laid before any American soldier 
who still smarted under that taunt in London 
streets, his good American sense, which is our 
best possession, would grasp and accept the thing 
in its true proportions. He wouldn't want to 
blot an Empire out because a handful of muckers 
called him names. Of this I am perfectly sure, 
because in Paris streets it was my happy lot four 
months after the Armistice to talk with many 
American soldiers, among whom some felt sore 
about the French. Not one of these but saw 
with his good American sense, directly I pointed 
certain facts out to him, that his hostile general- 
ization had been unjust. But, to quote the oft- 
quoted Mr. Kipling, that is another story, 
p 



210 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



An American regiment just arrived in France 
was encamped for purposes of training and 
experience next a British regiment come back 
from the front to rest. The streets of the two 
camps were adjacent, and the Tommies walked 
out to watch the Yankees pegging down their 
tents. 

^^Aw/' they said, ^'wot a shyme you've brought 
nobody along to tuck you in." 

They made other similar remarks ; commented 
unfavorably upon the aUgnment; ^'You were a 
bit late in coming," they said. Of course our 
boys had answers, and to these the Tommies had 
further answers, and this encounter of wits very 
naturally led to a result which could not possibly 
have been happier. I don't know what the Tom- 
mies expected the Yankees to do. I suppose they 
were as ignorant of our nature as we of theirs, 
and that they entertained preconceived notions. 
They suddenly found that we were, once again 
to quote Mr. Kipling, bachelors in barricks most 
remarkable hke " themselves. An American first 
sergeant hit a British first sergeant. Instantly 
a thousand men were milling. For thirty minutes 
they kept at it. Warriors reeled together and 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 211 



fell and rose and got it in the neck and the jaw 
and the eye and the nose — and all the while the 
British and American officers, splendidly discreet, 
saw none of it. British soldiers were carried 
back to their streets, still fighting, bunged Yankees 
staggered everywhere — but not an officer saw 
any of it. Black eyes the next day, and other 
tokens, very plainly showed who had been at this 
party. Thereafter a much better feeling pre- 
vailed between Tommies and Yanks. 

A more peaceful contact produced excellent 
consequences at an encampment of Americans 
in England. The Americans had brought over 
an idea, apparently, that the English were ^^easy.'^ 
They tried it on in sundry ways, but ended by 
the discovery that, while engaged upon this 
enterprise, they had been in sundry ways quite 
completely ^^done" themselves. This gave them 
a respect for their English cousins which they had 
never felt before. 

Here is another tale, similar in moral. This 
occurred at Brest, in France. In the Y hut sat 
an English lady, one of the hostesses. To her 
came a young American marine with whom she 
already Lad some acquaintance. This led him to 



212 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



ask for her advice. He said to Ker that as his 
permission was of only seventy-two hours, he 
wanted to be as economical of his time as he 
could and see everything best worth while for 
him to see during his leave. Would she, there- 
fore, tell him what things in Paris were the most 
interesting and in what order he had best take 
them? She rephed with another suggestion; 
why not, she said, ask for permission for England ? 
This would give him two weeks instead of seventy- 
two hours. At this he burst out violently that 
he would not set foot in England ; that he never 
wanted to have anything to do with England or 
with the English: ^'Why, I am a marine!" he 
exclaimed, ''and we marines would sooner knock 
down any Enghsh sailor than speak to him." 

The Enghsh lady, naturally, did not then tell 
him her nationahty. She now reahzed that he 
had supposed her to be American, because she 
had frequently been in America and had talked 
to him as no stranger to the country could. She, 
of course, did not urge his going to England ; she 
advised him what to see in France. He took his 
leave of seventy-two hours and when he returned 
was very grateful for the advice she had given him. 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA. 213 

She saw him often after this, and he grew to 
rely very much upon her friendly counsel. 
Finally, when the time came for her to go away 
from Brest, she told him that she was Enghsh. 
And then she said something hke this to him: 

'^Now, you told me you had never been in 
England and had never known an English person 
in your Ufe, and yet you had all these ideas 
against us because somebody had taught you 
wrong. It is not at all your fault. You are only 
nineteen years old and you cannot read about us, 
because you have no chance ; but at least you do 
know one Enghsh person now, and that English 
person begs you, when you do have a chance to 
read and inform yourself of the truth, to find out 
what England really has been, and what she has 
really done in this war.^' 

The end of the story' is that the boy, who had 
become devoted to her, did as she suggested. 
To-day she receives letters from him which show 
that nothing is left of his anti-Enghsh complex. 
It is another instance of how clearly our native 
American mind, if only the facts are given it, 
thinks, judges, and concludes. 

It is for those of my countrymen who will 



214 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



never have this chance, never meet some one who 
can guide them to the facts, that I tell these 
things. Let them cut out the dope." At this 
very moment that I write — November 24, 
1919 — the dope is being fed freely to all who are 
ready, whether through ignorance or through 
interested motives, to swallow it. The ancient 
grudge is being played up strong over the whole 
country" in the interest of Irish independence. 

Ian Hay in his two books so timely and so 
excellent. Getting Together and The Oppressed 
English, could not be as unreserved, naturally, 
as I can be about those traits in my own country- 
men which have, in the past at any rate, retarded 
English cordiality towards Americans. Of these 
I shall speak as plainly as I know how. But 
also, being an American and therefore by birth 
more indiscreet than Ian Hay, I shall speak as 
plainly as I know how of those traits in the 
English which have helped to keep warm our 
ancient grudge. Thus I may render both 
countries forever uninhabitable to me, but shall 
at least take mth me into exile a character for 
strict, if disastrous, impartiality. 

I begin wdth an American who was traveling 



'RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 215 

in an English train. It stopped somewhere, and 
out of the window he saw some buildings which 
interested him. 

^^Can you tell me what those are?" he asked 
an Englishman, a stranger, who sat in the other 
corner of the compartment. 

Better ask the guard," said the Englishman. 

Since that brief dialogue, this American does 
not think well of the English. 

Now, two interpretations of the Englishman's 
answer are possible. One is, that he didn't him- 
self know, and said so in his English way. English 
talk is often very short, much shorter than ours. 
That is because they all understand each other, 
are much closer knit than we are. Behind them 
are generations of doing it" in the same estab- 
lished way, a way that their long experience of 
life has hammered out for their own convenience, 
and which they like. We're not nearly so closely 
knit together here, save in certain spots, especially 
the old spots. In Boston they understand each 
other with very few words said. So they do in 
Charleston. But these spots of condensed and 
hoarded understanding lie far apart, are never 
confluent, and also differ in their details; while 



216 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



the whole of England is confluent, and the details 
have been slowly worked out through centuries 
of getting on together, and are accepted and ob- 
served exactly like the rules of a game. 

In America, if the American didn't know, he 
would have answered, ''I don't know. I think 
you'll have to ask the conductor," or at any rate, 
his reply would have been longer than the EngUsh- 
man's. But I am not going to accept the idea 
that the Englishman didn't know and said so in 
his brief usual way. It's equally possible that 
he did know. Then, you naturally ask, why in 
the name of common civility did he give such 
an answer to the American ? 

I believe that I can tell you. He didn't know 
that my friend was an American, he thought 
he was an Englishman who had broken the rules 
of the game. We do have some rules here in 
America, only we have not nearly so many, 
they're much more stretchable, and it's not all 
of us who have learned them. But nevertheless 
a good many have. 

Suppose you were travehng in a train here, and 
the man next you, whose face you had never 
seen before, and with whom you had not yet ex- 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 217 

changed a syllable, said: ''What's your pet 
name for your wife?" 

Wouldn't your immediate inclination be to 
say, ''What damned business is that of yours?" 
or words to that general effect? 

But again, you most naturally object, there was 
nothing personal in my friend's question about 
the buildings. No ; but that is not it. At the 
bottom, both questions are an invasion of the 
same deep-seated thing — the right to privacy. In 
America, what with the newspaper reporters 
and this and that and the other, the territory of 
a man's privacy has been lessened and lessened 
until very Httle of it remains; but most of us 
still do draw the Une somewhere ; we may not all 
draw it at the same place, but we do draw a line. 
The difference, then, between ourselves and the 
English in this respect is simply, that with them 
the territory of a man's privacy covers more 
ground, and different ground as well. An English- 
man doesn't expect strangers to ask him questions 
of a guide-book sort. For all such questions his 
EngUsh system provides perfectly definite persons 
to answer. If you want to know where the ticket 
office is, or where to take your baggage, or what 



218 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



time the train goes, or what platform it starts 
from, or what towns it stops at, and what churches 
or other buildings of interest are to be seen in 
those towns, there are porters and guards and 
Bradshaws and guidebooks to tell you, and it's 
they whom you are expected to consult, not any 
fellow-traveler who happens to be at hand. If 
you ask him, you break the rules. Had my 
friend said: '^I am an American. Would you 
mind telhng me what those buildings are?" all 
would have gone well. The Englishman would 
have recognized (not fifty years ago, but cer- 
tainly to-day) that it wasn't a question of rules 
between them, and would have at once explained 
— either that he didn't know, or that the build- 
ings were such and such. 

Do not, I beg, suppose for a moment that I am 
holding up the Enghsh way as better than our 
own — or worse. I am not making comparisons ; 
I am trying to show differences. Very Hkely there 
are many points wherein we think the English 
might do well to borrow from us ; and it is quite 
as Hkely that the Enghsh think we might here 
and there take a leaf from their book to our 
advantage. But I am not theorizing, I am not 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 219 



seeking to show that we manage hfe better or 
that they manage hfe better ; the only moral that 
I seek to draw from these anecdotes is, that we 
should each understand and hence make allowance 
for the other fellow's way. You will admit, I 
am sure, be you American or English, that 
everybody has a right to his own way? The 
proverb ^^When in Rome you must do as Rome 
does" covers it, and would save trouble if we 
always obeyed it. The people who forget it 
most are they that go to Rome for the first time ; 
and I shall give you both English and American 
examples of this presently. It is good to as- 
certain before you go to Rome, if you can, what 
Rome does do. 

Have you never been mistaken for a waiter, 
or something of that sort? Perhaps you will 
have heard the anecdote about one of our am- 
bassadors to England. All ambassadors, save 
ours, wear on formal occasions a distinguishing 
uniform, just as our army and navy officers do ; 
it is convenient, practical, and saves trouble. 
But we have declared it menial, or despotic, or 
un-American, or something equally silly, and 
hence our ambassadors must wear evening dress 



220 A .STRAIGHT DEAL j 

resembling closely the attire of those who are 
handing the supper or answering the door-bell. 
An Enghshman saw Mr. Choate at some diplo- 
matic function, standing about in this evening 
costume, and said : 
^Tall me a cab." 

'^You are a cab," said Mr. Choate, obediently. 

Thus did he make known to the Enghshman 
that he was not a waiter. Similarly in crowded 
hotel dining-rooms or crowded railroad stations 
have agitated ladies clutched my arm and 
said : 

'^I want a table for three," or ^'When does the 
train go to Poughkeepsie ? " 

Just as we in America have regular people to 
attend to these things, so do they in England ; 
and as the Enghsh respect each other's right to 
privacy very much more than we do, they resent 
invasions of it very much more than we do. 
But, let me say again, they are likely to mind it 
only in somebody they think knows the rules. 
With those who don't know them it is different. 
I say this with all the more certainty because of a 
fairly recent afternoon spent in an Enghsh garden 
with Enghsh friends. The question of pro- 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 221 

nunciation came up. Now you will readily see 
that with them and their compactness, their 
great pubUc schools, their two great Universities, 
and their great London, the one eternal focus of 
them all, both the chance of diversity in social 
customs and the tolerance of it must be far less 
than in our huge unfocused country. With us, 
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San 
Francisco, is each a centre. Here you can pro- 
nounce the word calm, for example, in one way 
or another, and it merely indicates where you 
come from. Departure in England from certain 
estabhshed pronunciations has another effect. 

^'Of course," said one of my friends, ''one 
knows where to place anybody who says 'girP" 
(pronouncing it as it is spelled). 

''That's frightful," said I, "because I say 
'girr." 

"Oh, but you are an American. It doesn't 
apply." 

But had I been English, it would have been 
something like coming to dinner without your 
collar. 

That is why I think that, had my friend in the 
train begun his question about the buildings by 



222 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



saying that he was an American, the answer 
would have been different. Not all the Enghsh 
yet, but many more than there were fifty or even 
twenty years ago, have ceased to apply their 
rules to us. 

About 1874 a friend of mine from New York 
was taken to a London Club . Into the room where 
he was came the Prince of Wales, who took out 
a cigar, felt for and found no matches, looked 
about, and there was a silence. My friend there- 
upon produced matches, struck one, and offered 
it to the Prince, who bowed, thanked him, lighted 
his cigar, and presently went away. 

Then an Englishman observed to my friend : 
''It's not the thing for a commoner to offer a 
light to the Prince." 

''I'm not a commoner, I'm an American," said 
my friend with perfect good nature. 

Whatever their rule may be to-day about the 
Prince and matches, as to us they have come to 
accept my friend's pertinent distinction : they 
don't expect us to keep or even to know their 
own set of rules. 

Indeed, they surpass us in this, they make more 
allowances for us than we for them. They don't 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 223 



criticize Americans for not being English. Amer- 
icans still constantly do criticize the EngUsh for 
not being Americans. Now, the measure in 
which you donH allow for the customs of another 
country is the measure of your own provincialism. 
I have heard some of our own soldiers express 
dislike of the English because of their coldness. 
The English are not cold ; they are silent upon 
certain matters. But it is all there. Do you 
remember that sailor at Zeebrugge carrying the 
unconscious body of a comrade to safety, not 
sure yet if he were alive or dead, and stroking 
that comrade's head as he went, saying over and 
over, ^^Did you think I would leave yer?'' We 
are more demonstrative, we spell things out which 
it is the way of the English to leave between the 
lines. But it is all there ! Behind that uncon- 
ciliating wall of shyness and reserve, beats and 
hides the warm, loyal British heart, the most 
constant heart in the world. 
''It isn't done.'' 

That phrase applies to many things in England 
besides offering a hght to the Prince, or asking a 
fellow traveler what those buildings are; and I 
think that the Englishman's notion of his right 



224 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



to privacy lies at the bottom of quite a number of 
these things. You may lay some of them to 
snobbishness, to caste, to shyness, they may have 
various secondary origins; but I prefer to cover 
them all with the broader term, the right to 
privacy, because it seems philosophically to 
account for them and explain them. 

In May, 1915, an Oxford professor was in New 
York. A few years before this I had read a book 
of his which had dehghted me. I met him at 
lunch, I had not known him before. Even as we 
shook hands, I blurted out to him my admiration 
for his book. 

'^Oh.'^ 

That was the whole of his reply. It made me 
laugh at myself, for I should have known better. 
I had often been in England and could have told 
anybody that you mustn't too abruptly or 
obviously refer to what the other fellow does, still 
less to what you do yourseh. ^'It isn't done." 
It's a sort of indecent exposure. It's one of the 
invasions of the right to privacy. 

In America, not everywhere but in many 
places, a man upon entering a club and seeing 
a friend across the room, will not hesitate to 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 225 



call out to him, ''Hullo, Jack!" or ''Hullo, 
George!" or whatever. In England "it isn't 
done." The greeting would be conveyed by a 
short nod or a glance. To call out a man's 
name across a room full of people, some of whom 
may be total strangers, invades his privacy and 
theirs. Have you noticed how, in our Pullman 
parlor cars, a party sitting together, generally 
young women, will shriek their conversation in 
a voice that bores like a gimlet through the 
whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. 
In England "it isn't done." We shouldn't stand 
it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we do stand it. 
It is a good instance to show that the English- 
man's right to privacy is larger than ours, and 
thus that his liberty is larger than ours. 

Before leaving this point, which to my thinking 
is the cause of many frictions and rnisunderstand- 
ings between ourselves and the English, I mustn't 
omit to give instances of divergence, where an 
Englishman will speak of matters upon which 
we are silent, and is silent upon subjects of which 
we will speak. 

You may present a letter of introduction to an 
Englishman, and he wishes to be civil, to help 

Q 



226 A STRAIGHT. DEAL 



you to have a good time. It is quite possible 
he may say something Hke this : 

"I think you had better know my sister Sophy. 
You mayn't hke her. But her dinners are rather 
amusing. Of course the food's ghastly because 
she's the stingiest woman in London." 

On the other hand, many Americans (though 
less willing than the French) are wilHng to dis- 
cuss creed, immortality, faith. There is noth- 
ing from which the Englishman more peremptorily 
recoils, although he hates well nigh as deeply all 
abstract discussion, or to be clever, or to have 
you be clever. An American friend of mine had 
grown tired of an Enghshman who had been 
finding fault with one American thing after 
another. So he suddenly said : 

^'Will you tell me why you English when you 
enter your pews on Sunday always immediately 
smell your hats ? " 

The Englishman stiffened. '^I refuse to dis- 
cuss religious subjects with you," he said. 

To be ponderous over this anecdote grieves me 
— but you may not know that orthodox English- 
men usually don't kneel, as we do, after reaching 
their pews ; they stand for a moment, covering 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 227 



their faces with their well-brushed hats : with 
each nation the observance is the same, it is in 
the manner of the observing that we differ. 

Much is said about our '^conamon language/' 
and its being a reason for our understanding 
each other. Yes; but it is also almost as much 
a cause for our misunderstanding each other. It 
is both a help and a trap. If we Americans spoke 
something so wholly different from English as 
French is, comparisons couldn't be made; and 
somebody has remarked that comparisons are 
odious. 

'^Why do you call your luggage baggage?" 
says the Englishman — or used to say. 

^'Why do you call your baggage luggage?" 
says the American — or used to say. 

^'Why don't you say treacle?" inquires the 
Englishman. 

Because we call it molasses," answers the 
American. 

^^How absurd to speak of a car when you mean 
a carriage!" exclaims the Englishman. 

^'We don't mean a carriage, we mean a car," 
retorts the American. 

You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps 



228 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



even held) foolish conversations like that; and 
you will readily perceive that if we didn't say 
^^car" when we spoke of the vehicle you get 
into when you board a train, but called it a 
voiturej or something else quite '^foreign," the 
Englishman would not feel that we had taken a 
sort of liberty with his mother-tongue. A deep 
point lies here : for most English the world is 
divided into three peoples, Enghsh, foreigners, 
and Americans; and for most of us likewise it 
is divided into Americans, foreigners, and Eng- 
lish. Now a ^'foreigner'' can call molasses what- 
ever he pleases ; we do not feel that he has taken 
any liberty with our mother-tongue; his tongue 
has a different mother; he can't help that; he's 
not to be criticized for that. But we and the 
English speak a tongue that has the same mother. 
This identity in pedigree has led and still leads 
to countless family discords. I've not a doubt 
that divergences in vocabulary and in accent 
were the fount and origin of some swollen noses, 
some battered eyes, when our Yankees mixed 
with the Tommies. Each would be certain to 
think that the other couldn't ''talk straight" — 
and each would be certain to say so. I shall 



) 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 229 

not here spin out a list of different names for the 
same things now current in English and Amer- 
ican usage : molasses and treacle will suffice for 
an example; you will be able easily to think of 
others, and there are many such that occur in 
everyday speech. Almost more tricky are those 
words which both peoples use alike, but with 
different meanings. I shall spin no list of these 
either; one example there is which I cannot 
name, of two words constantly used in both 
countries, each word quite proper in one country, 
while in the other it is more than improper. 
Thirty years ago I explained this one evening 
to a young Englishman who was here for a while. 
Two or three days later, he thanked me fervently 
for the warning : it had saved him, during a 
game of tennis, from a frightful shock, when his 
partner, a charming girl, meaning to tell him to 
cheer up, had used the word that is so harmless 
with us and in England so far beyond the pale 
of polite society. 

Quite as much as words, accent also leads to 
dissension. I have heard many an American 
speak of the English accent as ^'affected"; and 
our accent displeases the English. Now what 



230 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



Englishman, or what American, ever criticizes 
a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language 
as we do ? His tongue has a different mother ! 

I know not how in the course of the years all 
these divergences should have come about, and 
none of us need care. There they are. As a 
matter of fact, both England and America are 
mottled with varying accents Hterate and il- 
hterate; equally true it is that each nation 
has its notion of the other's way of speaking — 
we're known by our shrill nasal twang, they by 
their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as 
true is it that not all Americans and not all Enghsh 
do in their enunciation conform to these types. 

One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salis- 
bury to see that beautiful cathedral and its 
serene and gracious close. '^Star-scattered on 
the grass," and beneath the noble trees, lay 
New Zealand soldiers, soHtary or in little groups, 
gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at the 
inn I was shown to a small table, where sat al- 
ready a young Enghshman in evening dress, at 
his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, 
and he returned it. Presently we were talking. 
When I said that I was stopping expressly to see 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 231 

the cathedral, and how like a trance it was to find 
a scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders 
lying all about, he looked puzzled. It was at 
this, or immediately after this, that I explained 
to him my nationality. 

^^I shouldn't have known it/' he remarked, 
after an instant's pause. 

I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; 
somewhat reluctantly, I think, but with ex- 
cellent good- will. Of course it was the same 
old mother-tongue ! 

'^You mean," I said, ^Hhat I haven't happened 
to say guess,' and that I don't, perhaps, talk 
through my nose? But we don't all do that. 
We do all sorts of things." 

He stuck to it. ^'You talk like us." 

'^Well, I'm sure I don't mean to talk like 
anybody!" I sighed. 

This diverted him, and brought us closer. 

"And see here," I continued, "I knew you 
were English, although you've not dropped a 
single h." 

"Oh, but," he said, "dropping h's — that's — 
that's not—" 

"I know it isn't," I said. "Neither is talking 



232 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



through your nose. And we don't all say 'Amur- 
rican.'" 

But he stuck to it. ''All the same there is an 
American voice. The train yesterday was full 
of it. Officers. Unmistakable." And he shook 
his head. 

After this we got on better than ever; and as 
he went his way, he gave me some advice about 
the hotel. I should do well to avoid the reading- 
room. The hotel went in rather too much for 
being old-fashioned. Ran it into the ground. 
Tiresome. Good-night. 

Presently I shall disclose more plainly to you 
the moral of my Sahsbury anecdote. 

Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes 
the hps of the French when they visit our shores ? 
Not from the French do you hear prompt as- 
persions as to our differences from them. They 
observe that proverb about being in Rome : 
they may not be able to do as Rome does, but 
they do not inquire why Rome isn't hke Paris. 
If you ask them how they like our hotels or our 
trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer 
their own, but they will hardly volunteer this 
opinion. But the American in England and the 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 233 



Englishman in America go about volunteering 
opinions. Are the French more discreet? I 
believe that they are; but I wonder if there is 
not also something else at the bottom of it. You 
and I will say things about our cousins to our 
aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsiders to 
say those things. Is it this, the-members-of- 
the-family principle, which makes us less discreet 
than the French? Is it this, too, which leads us 
by a seeming paradox to resent criticism more 
when it comes from England? I know not how 
it may be with you; but with me, when I pick 
up the paper and read that the Germans are 
calling us pig-dogs again, I am merely amused. 
When I read French or Italian abuse of us, I 
am sorry, to be sure; but when some English 
paper jumps on us, I hate it, even when I know 
that what it says isn't true. So here, if I am right 
in my members-of-the-family hypothesis, you have 
the English and ourselves feeUng free to be dis- 
agreeable to each other because we are relations, 
and yet feeling especially resentful because it's a 
relation who is being disagreeable. I merely 
put the point to you, I lay no dogma down con- 
cerning members of the family; but I am per- 



234 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



fectly sure that discretion is a quality more 
common to the French than to ourselves or our 
relations : I mean something a little more than 
discretion, I mean esprit de conduite, for which 
it is hard to find a translation. 

Upon my first two points, the right to privacy 
and the mother-tongue, I have fingered long, 
feefing these to be not only of prime importance 
and wide application, but also to be quite beyond 
my power to make lucid in, short compass. I 
trust that they have been made lucid. I must 
now get on to further anecdotes, illustrating 
other and less subtle causes of misunderstanding ; 
and I feel somewhat like the author of Don 
Juan when he exclaims that he almost wishes 
he had ne'er begun that very remarkable poem. 
I renounce all pretense to the French virtue of 
discretion. 

Evening dress has been the source of many 
irritations. • Engfishmen did not appear to think 
that they need wear it at American dinner parties. 
There was a good deal of this at one time. During 
that period an Engfishman, who had brought 
letters to a gentleman in Boston and in conse- 
quence had been asked to dinner, entered the 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 235 



house of his host in a tweed suit. His host, in 
evening dress of course, met him in the hall. 

'^Oh, I see," said the Bostonian, 'Hhat you 
haven't your dress suit with you. The man 
will take you upstairs and one of mine will fit 
you well enough. We'll wait." 

In England, a cricketer from Philadelphia, 
after the match at Lord's, had been invited to 
dine at a great house with the rest of his 
eleven. They were to go there on a coach. 
The American discovered after arrival that he 
alone of the eleven had not brought a dress suit 
with him. He asked his host what he was to 
do. 

^^I advise you to go home," said the host. 

The moral here is not that all hosts in England 
would have treated a guest so, or that all Amer- 
ican hosts would have met the situation so well 
as that Boston gentleman : but too many EngHsh 
used to be socially brutal — quite as much so 
to each other as to us, or any one. One should 
bear that in mind. I know of nothing more 
English in its way than what Eton answered to 
Beaumont (I think) when Beaumont sent a chal- 
lenge to play cricket : , 



236 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



^'Harrow we know, and Rugby we have heard 
of. But who are you?'' 

That sort of thing belongs rather to the Pahn- 
erston days than to these; belongs to days 
that were nearer in spirit to the Waterloo of 
1815, which a haughty England won, than to the 
Waterloo of 1914^18, which a humbler England 
so nearly lost. 

Turn we next the other way for a look at our- 
selves. An American lady who had brought a 
letter of introduction to an Englishman in Lon- 
don was in consequence asked to lunch. He 
naturally and hospitably gathered to meet her 
various distinguished guests. Afterwards she 
wrote him that she wished him to invite her 
to lunch again, as she had matters of importance 
to tell him. Why, then, didn't she ask him to 
lunch with her? Can you see? I think I do. 

An American lady was at a house party in 
Scotland at which she met a gentleman of old 
and famous Scotch blood. He was wearing the 
kilt of his clan. While she talked with him she 
stared, and finally burst out laughing. ''I de- 
clare," she said, ^'that's positively the most 
ridiculous thing I ever saw a man dressed in." 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 237 

At the Savoy hotel in August, 1914, when 
England declared war upon Germany, many 
American women made scenes of confusion and 
vociferation. About England and the blast of 
Fate which had struck her they had nothing to 
say, but crowded and wailed of their own dis- 
comforts, meals, rooms, every paltry personal 
inconvenience to which they were subjected, or 
feared that they were going to be subjected. 
Under the unprecedented stress this was, per- 
haps, not unnatural ; but it would have seemed 
less displeasing had they also occasionally showed 
concern for England's plight and peril. 

An American, this time a man (our crudities 
are not limited to the sex) stood up in a theatre, 
disputing the sixpence which you always have 
to pay for your program in the London theatres. 
He disputed so long that many people had to 
stand waiting to be shown their seats. 

During deals at a game of bridge on a Cunard 
steamer, the talk had turned upon a certain 
historic house in an English county. The talk 
was friendly, everything had been friendly each 
day. 

*^Well/' said a very rich American to his Eng- 



238 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



lish partner in the game, 'Hhose big estates will 
all be ours pretty soon. We're going to buy 
them up and turn your island into our summer 
resort." No doubt this millionaire intended to 
be playfully humorous. 

At a table where several British and one Amer- 
ican — an officer — sat during another ocean 
voyage between Liverpool and Halifax in June, 
1919, the officer expressed satisfaction to be 
getting home again. He had gone over, he said, 
to clean up the mess the British had made." 

To a company of Americans who had never 
heard it before, was told the well-known exploit 
of an American girl in Europe. In an ancient 
church she was shown the tomb of a soldier who 
had been killed in battle three centuries ago. In 
his honor and memory, because he lost his life 
bravely in a great cause, his family had kept a 
little ghmmering lamp alight ever since. It 
hung there, beside the tomb. 

"And that's never gone out in all this time?" 
asked the American girl. 

''Never," she was told. 

''Well, it's out now, anyway/' and she blew 
it out, 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 239 

All the Americans who heard this were shocked 
— all but one, who said : 

'^Well, I think she was right/' 

There you are! There you have us at our 
very worst ! And with this plump specimen of 
the American in Europe at his very worst, I 
turn back to the English : only, pray do not fail 
to give those other Americans who were shocked 
by the outrage of the lamp their due. How wide 
of the mark would you be if you judged us all 
by the one who approved of that horrible vandal 
girFs act ! It cannot be too often repeated that 
we must never condemn a whole people for 
what some of the people do. 

In the two-and-a-half anecdotes which follow, 
you must watch out for something which lies 
beneath their very obvious surface. 

An American sat at lunch with a great English 
lady in her country-house. Although she had seen 
him but once before, she began a conversation like 
this : 

Did the American know the van Squibbers? 
He did not. 

Well, the van Squibbers, his hostess explained, 
were Americans who lived in London and went 



240 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



everywhere. One certainly did see them every- 
where. They were almost too extraordinary. 

Now the American knew quite all about these 
van Squibbers. He knew also that in New York, 
and Boston, and Philadelphia, and in many other 
places where existed a society with still some 
ragged remnants of decency and decorum left, 
one would not meet this highly star-spangled 
family everywhere.'^ 

The hostess kept it up. Did the American 
know the Butteredbuns ? No? Well, one met 
the Butteredbuns everywhere too. They were 
rather more extraordinary than the van Squib- 
bers. And then there were the Cakewalks, and 
the Smith-Trapezes. Mrs. Smith-Trapeze wasn't 
as extraordinary as her daughter — the one that 
put the live frog in Lord Meldon's soup — and 
of course neither of them were ^Halked about" 
in the same way that the eldest Cakewalk girl 
was talked about. Everybody went to them, 
of course, because one really never knew what 
one might miss if one didn't go. 

At length the American said : 

^^You must correct me if I am wrong in an 
impression I have received. Vulgar Americans 
seem to me to get on very well in London." 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 241 

The hostess paused for a moment, and then 
she said : 

''That is perfectly true.'' 

This acknowledgment was complete, and per- 
fectly friendly, and after that all went better 
than it had gone before. 

The half anecdote is a part of this one, and 
happened a few weeks later at table — dinner 
this time. 

Sitting next to the same American was an 
Enghsh lady whose conversation led him to re- 
peat to her what he had said to his hostess at 
lunch: ''Vulgar Americans seem to get on very 
well in London society." 

"They do," said the lady, "and I will tell you 
why. We Enghsh — I mean that set of Enghsh 
— are blas6. We see each other too much, we 
are all ahke in our ways, and we are awfully tired 
of it. Therefore it refreshes us and amuses us 
to see something new and different." 

"Then," said the American, "you accept these 
hideous people's invitations, and go to their 
houses, and eat their food, and drink their cham- 
pagne, and it's just like going to see the monkeys 
at the Zoo?" 



242 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



^^It is," returned the lady. 

"But/' the American asked, "isn't that awfully 
low down of you?" (He smiled as he said it.) 

Iromediately the EngUsh lady assented; and 
grew more cordial. When next day the party 
came to break up, she contrived in the manner 
of her farewell to make the American understand 
that because of their conversation she bore him 
not ill will but good will. 

Once more, the scene of my anecdote is at 
table, a long table in a club, where men came 
to lunch. All were Enghshmen, except a single 
stranger. He was an American, who through 
the kindness of one beloved member of that 
club, no longer living now, had received a card 
to the club. The American, upon sitting down 
alone in this company, felt what I suppose that 
many of us feel in like circumstances : he wished 
there were somebody there who knew him and 
could nod to him. Nevertheless, he was sp6ken 
to, asked questions about various of his fellow 
countrymen, and made at home. Presently, 
however, an elderly member who had been silent 
and whom I will designate as being of the Dr. 
Samuel Johnson type, said : 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 243 

''You seem to be having trouble in your pack- 
ing houses over in America?" 
We were. 

''Very disgraceful, those exposures." 

They were. It was May, 1906. 

"Your Government seems to be doing some- 
thing about it. It's certainly scandalous. Such 
abuses should never have been possible in the 
first place. It oughtn't to require your Govern- 
ment to stop it. It shouldn't have started." 

"I fancy the facts aren't quite so bad as that 
sensational novel about Chicago makes them 
out," said the American. "At least I have been 
told so." 

"It all sounds characteristic to me," said the 
Sam Johnson. "It's quite the sort of thing one 
expects to hear from the States." 

"It is characteristic," said the American. 
"In spite of all the years that the sea has sepa- 
rated us, we're still inveterately like you, a bully- 
ing, dishonest lot — though we've had nothing 
quite so bad yet as your opium trade with China. '^ 

The Sam Johnson said no more. 

At a ranch in Wyoming were a number of 
Americans and one Englishman, a man of note, 



244 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



bearing a celebrated name. He was telling the 
company what one could do in the way of amuse- 
ment in the evening in London. 

''And if there's nothing at the theatres and 
everything else fails, you can always go to one 
of the restaurants and hear the Americans eat." 

There you have them, my anecdotes. They 
are chosen from many. I hope and beheve that, 
between them all, they cover the ground; that, 
taken together as I want you to take them after 
you have taken them singly, they make my 
several points clear. As I see it, they reveal the 
chief whys and wherefores of friction between 
English and Americans. It is also my hope that 
I have been equally disagreeable to everybody. 
If I am to be banished from both countries, I 
shall try not to pass my exile in Switzerland, 
which is indeed a lovely place, but just now too 
full of celebrated Germans. 

Beyond my two early points, the right to 
privacy and the mother-tongue, what are the 
generahzations to be drawn from my data? I 
should like to dodge spelling them out, I should 
immensely prefer to leave it here. Some readers 
know it already, knew it before I began; while 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 245 



for others, what has been said will be enough. 
These, if they have the will to friendship instead 
of the will to hate, will get rid of their anti- 
English complex, supposing that they had one, 
and understand better in future what has not 
been clear to them before. But I seem to feel 
that some readers there may be who will wish 
me to be more expUcit. 

First, then. England has a thousand years 
of greatness to her credit. Who would not be 
proud of that? Arrogance is the seamy side 
of pride. That is what has rubbed us Amer- 
icans the wrong way. We are recent. Our 
thousand years of greatness are to come. Such 
is our passionate beUef. Crudity is the seamy 
side of youth. Our crudity rubs the Enghsh 
the wrong way. Compare the American who 
said we were going to buy England for a summer 
resort with the Englishman who said that when 
all other entertainment in London failed, you 
could always hsten to the Americans eat. Cru- 
dity, freshness" on our side, arrogance, top- 
loftiness on theirs : such is one generalization I 
would have you disengage from my anecdotes. 

Second. The English are blunter than we. 



246 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



They talk to us as they would talk to themselves. 
The way we take it reveals that we are too often 
thin-skinned. Recent people are apt to be thin- 
skinned and self-conscious and self-assertive, 
while those with a thousand years of tradition 
would have thicker hides and would never feel 
it necessary to assert themselves. Give an 
EngUshman as good as he gives you, and you 
are certain to win his respect, and probably 
his regard. In this connection see my anecdote 
about the Tonmiies and Yankees who physically 
fought it out, and compare it with the Salisbury, 
the van Squibber, and the opium trade anecdotes. 

Treat 'em rough," when they treat you rough: 
they Uke it. Only, be sure you do it in the right 
way. 

Third. We differ because we are ahke. That 
American who stood in the theatre complaining 
about the sixpence he didn't have to pay at 
home is exactly like Englishmen I have seen 
complaining about the unexpected here. We 
share not only the same mother-tongue, we share 
every other fundamental thing upon which our 
welfare rests and our lives are carried on. We 
like the same things, we hate the same things. 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 247 



We have the same notions about justice, law, 
conduct; about what a man should be, about 
what a woman should be. It is like the mother- 
tongue we share, yet speak with a difference. 
Take the mother-tongue for a parable and symbol 
of all the rest. Just as the word '^girP' is iden- 
tical to our sight but not to our hearing, and 
means oh! quite the same thing throughout us 
all in all its meanings, so that identity of nature 
which we share comes often to the surface in 
different guise. Our loquacity estranges the 
Englishman, his silence estranges us. Behind 
that silence beats the Enghsh heart, warm, con- 
stant, and true; none other Hke it on earth, 
except our own at its best, beating behind our 
loquacity. 

Thus far my anecdotes carry me. May they 
help some reader to a better understanding of 
what he has misunderstood heretofore ! 

No anecdotes that I can find (though I am 
sure that they are to be found) will illustrate 
one difference between the two peoples, very 
noticeable to-day. It is increasing. An EngUsh- 
man not only sticks closer than a brother to his 
own rights, he respects the rights of his neighbor 



248 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



just as strictly. We Americans are losing our 
grip on this. It is the bottom of the whole thing. 
It is the moral keystone of democracy. How- 
soever we may talk about our own rights to-day, 
we pay less and less respect to those of our neigh- 
bors. The result is that to-day there is more 
hberty in England than here. Liberty consists 
and depends upon respecting your neighbor's 
rights every bit as fairly and squarely as your 
own. 

On the other hand, I wonder if the Enghsh are 
as good losers as we are? Hardly anything that 
they could do would rub us more the wrong way 
than to deny to us that fair play in sport which 
they accord each other. I shall not more than 
mention the match between our Benicia Boy and 
their Tom Sayers. Of this the EngUsh version 
is as defective as our school-book account of *the 
Revolution. I shall also pass over various other 
international events that are somewhat well 
known, and I will illustrate the point with an 
anecdote known to but a few. 

Crossing the ocean were some young EngUsh 
and Americans, who got up an international 
tug-of-war. A friend of mine was anchor of 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 249 

our team. We happened to win. They didn't 
take it very well. One of them said to the anchor : 

^^Do you know why you pulled us over the 
Une?'' 

^^No.'' 

Because you had all the blackguards on your 
side of the line.'' 

^^Do you know why we had all the blackguards 
on our side of the hne?" inquired the American. 

^^No." 

Because we pulled you over the hne." 
In one of my anecdotes I used the term Sam 
Johnson to describe an Enghshman of a certain 
type. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a very marked 
specimen of the type, and almost the only illus- 
trious Enghshman of letters during our Revo- 
lutionary troubles who was not our friend. Right 
down through the years ever since, there have 
been Sam Johnsons writing and saying unfavor- 
able things about us. The Tory must be eternal, 
as much as the Whig or Liberal; and both are 
always needed. There will probably always be 
Sam Johnsons in England, just hke the one who 
was scandalized by our Chicago packing-house 
disclosures. No longer ago than June 1, 1919, 



250 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



a Sam Johnson^ who was discussing the Peace 
Treaty, said in my hearing, in London : 

"The Yankees shouldn't have been brought 
into any consultation. They aided and abetted 
Germany." 

In LittelVs Living Age of July 20, 1918, pages 
151-160, you may read an interesting account of 
British writers on the United States. The by- 
gone ones were pretty preposterous. They sati- 
rized the newness of a new country. It was like 
visiting the Esquimaux and complaining that 
they grew no pineapples and wore skins. In 
Littell you will find how few are the recent Sam 
Johnsons as compared with the recent friendly 
writers. You will also be reminded that our 
anti-EngHsh complex was discerned generations 
ago by Washington Irving. He said in his 
Sketch Book that writers in this country were 
'instilling anger and resentment into the bosom 
of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth 
and to strengthen with its strength." 

And he quotes from the EngHsh Quarterly 
Review, which in that early day already wrote of 
America and England : 

There is a sacred bond between us by blood 



RUDE BRITANNIA, CRUDE COLUMBIA 251 



and by language which no circumstances can 
break. . . . Nations are too ready to admit 
that they have natural enemies; why should 
they be less willing to beheve that they have 
natural friends?'' 

It is we ourselves to-day, not England, that 
are pushing friendship away. It is our politicians, 
papers, and propagandists who are making the 
trouble and the noise. In England the will to 
friendship rules, has ruled for a long while. Does 
the will to hate rule with us? Do we prefer 
Germany? Do we prefer the independence of 
Ireland to the peace of the world? 



CHAPTER XVI 
AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 



CHAPTER XVI 



AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 

A PART of the Irish is asking our voice and our 
gold to help independence for the whole of the 
Irish. Independence is not desired by the whole 
of the Irish. Irishmen of Ulster have plainly said 
so. Everybody knows this. Roman Catholics 
themselves are not unanimous. Only some of 
them desire independence. These, known as 
Sinn Fein, appeal to us for dehverance from their 
conqueror and oppressor; they dwell upon the 
oppression of England beneath which Ireland is 
now crushed. They refer to England's brutal and 
unjustifiable conquest of the Irish nation seven 
hundred and forty-eight years ago. 

What is the truth, what are the facts ? 

By his bull ^'Laudabiliter," in 1155, Pope 
Adrian the Fourth invited the King of England to 
take charge of Ireland. In 1172 Pope Alexander 
the Third confirmed this by several letters, at 
present preserved in the Black Book of the Ex- 

255 



256 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



chequer. Accordingly, Henry the Second went to 
Ireland. All the archbishops and bishops of Ire- 
land met him at Waterford, received him as king 
and lord of Ireland, vowing loyal obedience to him 
and his successors, and acknowledging fealty to 
them forever. These prelates were followed by 
the kings of Cork, Limerick, Ossory, Meath, and 
by Reginald of Waterford. Roderick O'Connor, 
King of Connaught, joined them in 1175. All 
these accepted Henry the Second of England as 
their Lord and King, swearing to be loyal to him 
and his successors forever. 

Such was England's brutal and unjustifiable 
conquest of Ireland. 

Ireland was not a nation, it was a tribal chaos. 
The Irish nation of that day is a legend, a myth, 
built by poetic imagination. During the cen- 
turies succeeding Henry the Second, were many 
eras of violence and bloodshed. In reading the 
story, it is hard to say which side committed the 
most crimes. During those same centuries, vio- 
lence and bloodshed and oppression existed every- 
where in Europe. Undoubtedly England was 
very oppressive to Ireland at times ; but since the 
days of Gladstone she has steadily endeavored to 



AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 257 



relieve Ireland, with the result that today she is 
oppressing Ireland rather less than onr Federal 
Government is oppressing Massachusetts, or South 
Carolina, or any State. By the Wyndham Land 
Act of 1903, Ireland was placed in a position so 
advantageous, so utterly the reverse of oppression, 
that Dillon, the present leader, hastened to ob- 
struct the operation of the Act, lest the Irish 
genius for grievance might perish from starvation. 
Examine the state of things for yourself, I cannot 
swell this book with the details ; they are as acces- 
sible to you as the few facts about the conquest 
which I have just narrated. Examine the facts, 
but even without examining them, ask yourself 
this question : With Canada, AustraUa, and all 
those other colonies that I have named above, 
satisfied with England's rule, hastening to her 
assistance, and with only Ireland selling herself to 
Germany, is it not just possible that something is 
the matter with Ireland rather than with England ? 

Sinn Fein will hear of no Home Rule. Sinn 
Fein demands independence. Independence Sinn 
Fein will not get. Not only because of the outrage 
to unconsenting Ulster, but also because Britain, 
having just got rid of one Heligoland to the East, 
s 



258 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



will not permit another to start up on the West. 
As early as August 25th, 1914, mention in German 
papers was made of the presence in Berlin of 
Casement and of his mission to invite Germany to 
step into Ireland when England was fighting 
Germany. The traffic went steadily on from that 
time, and broke out in the revolution and the 
crimes in Dubhn in 1916. England discovered 
the plan of the revolution just in time to foil the 
landing in Ireland of Germany, whom Ireland had 
invited there. Were England seeking to break 
loose from Ireland, she could sue Ireland for a 
divorce and name the Kaiser as co-respondent. 
Any court would grant it. 

The part of Ireland which does not desire inde- 
pendence, which desires it so Uttle that it was 
ready to resist Home Rule by force in 1914, is the 
steady, thrifty, clean, coherent, prosperous part of 
Ireland. It is the other, the unstable part of 
Ireland, which has declared Ireland to be a Re- 
pubUc. For convenience I will designate this part 
as Green Ireland, and the thrifty, stable part as 
Orange Ireland. So when our politicians sym- 
pathize with an ''Irish" Repubhc, they befriend 
merely Green Ireland ; they offend Orange Ireland, 



AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 259 



Americans are being told in these days that 
they owe a debt of support to Irish independence, 
because the Irish'' fought with us in our own 
struggle for Independence. Yes, the Irish did, 
and we do owe them a debt of support. But it 
was the Orange Irish who fought in our Revolu- 
tion, not the Green Irish. Therefore in paying 
the debt to the Green Irish and clamoring for 
Irish" independence, we are double crossing 
the Orange Irish. 

^'It is a curious fact that in the Revolutionary 
War the Germans and Catholic Irish should have 
furnished the bulk of the auxiliaries to the regular 
English soldiers; . . . The fiercest and most 
ardent Americans of all, however, were the Pres- 
byterian Irish settlers and their descendants.' ' 
History of New York, p. 133, by Theodore Roose- 
velt. 

Next, in what manner have the Green Irish 
incurred our thanks? 

They made the ancient and honorable associa- 
tion of Tammany their own. Once it was Ameri- 
can. Now Tammany is Green Irish. I do not 
believe that I need pause to tell you much about 
Tammany. It defeated Mitchel, a loyal but 



260 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



honest Catholic, and the best Mayor of New 
York in thirty years. It is a despotism built on 
corruption and fear. 

During our Civil War, it was the Green Irish 
that resisted the draft in New York. They 
would not fight. You have heard of the draft 
riots in New York in 1862. They would not 
fight for the Confederacy either. 

During the following decade, in Pennsylvania, 
an association, called the Molly Maguires, ter- 
rorized the coal regions until their reign of assas- 
sination was brought to an end by the detection, 
conviction, and execution of their ringleaders. 
These were Green Irish. 

In Cork and Queenstown during the recent 
war, our American sailors were assaulted and 
stoned by the Green Irish, because they had 
come to help fight Germany. These assaults, 
and the retaliations to which they led, became 
so serious that no naval men under the rank of 
Commander were permitted to go to Cork. 
Leading citizens of Cork came to beg that this 
order be rescinded. But, upon being cross- 
examined, it was found that the Green Irish who 
had made the trouble had never been punished. 



AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 261 

Of this many of us had news before Admiral Sims 
in The World's Work for November, pages 63-64, 
gave it his authoritative confirmation. 

Taking one consideration with another, it 
hardly seems to me that our debt to the Green 
Irish is sufficiently heavy for us to hinder England 
for the sake of helping them and Germany. 

Not all the Green Irish were guilty of the at- 
tacks upon our sailors ; not all by any means were 
pro-German; and I know personally of loyal 
Roman Catholics who are wholly on England's 
side, and are wholly opposed to Sinn Fein. Many 
such are here, many in Ireland : them I do not 
mean. It is Sinn Fein that I mean. 

In 1918, when England with her back to the wall 
was fighting Germany, the Green Irish killed the 
draft. Here following, I give some specific in- 
stances of what the Roman CathoHc priests said. 

April 21st. After mass at Castletown, Bear 
Haven, Father Brennan ordered his flock to 
resist conscription, take the sacrament, and to be 
ready to resist to the death ; such death insuring 
the full benediction of God and his Church. If 
the police resort to force, let the people kill the 
police as they would kill any one who threatened 



262 A STRAIGHT DEAL 

their lives. If soldiers came in support of the 
draft, let them be treated like the pohce. PoHce- 
men and soldiers dying in their attempt to carry 
out the draft law, would die the enemies of God, 
while the people who resisted them would die in 
peace with God and under the benediction of his 
Church. 

Father Lynch said in church at Ryehill : 
'^Resist the draft by every means in your power. 
Any minion of the EngHsh Government who fires 
upon you, above all if he is a Catholic, commits 
a mortal sin and God will punish him." 

In the chapel at Kilgarvan Father Murphy said : 
''Every Irishman who helps to apply the draft in 
Ireland is not only a traitor to his country, but 
commits a mortal sin against God's law." 

At mass in Scariff the Rev. James Maclnerney 
said: ''No Irish Catholic, whatever his station 
be, can help the draft in this country without 
denying his faith." 

April 28th. After having given the conmaunion 
to three hundred men in the church at Eyries, 
County Cork, Father Gerald Dennehy said: 
"Any Catholic who either as policeman or as 
agent of the government shall assist in applying 



AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 263 

the draft, shall be excommunicated and cursed by 
the Roman Cathohc Church. The curse of God 
will follow him in every land. You can kill him 
at sight, God will bless you and it will be the most 
acceptable sacrifice that you can offer." 

Referring to any policeman who should attempt 
to enforce the draft, Father Murphy said at mass 
in Killenna, ^^Any policeman who is killed in such 
attempt will be damned in hell, even if he was in a 
state of grace that very morning." 

Ninety-five percent of those Irish policemen 
were CathoHcs and had to respect the commands 
of those priests. 

Ireland is England's business, not ours. But 
the word '^self-determination" appears to hypno- 
tize some Americans. We must not be hypno- 
tized by this word. It is upon the principle" 
expressed in this word that, our sympathies with 
the Irish Republic are asked. The six north- 
eastern counties of Ulster, on the principle" of 
self-determination, should be separated from the 
Irish Republic. But the Green Irish will not listen 
to that. Protestants in Ulster had to listen in 
their own chief city to Sinn Fein rejoicings over 
German victories. The rebeUion of 1916, when 



264 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



Sinn Fein opened the back door that England's 
enemies might enter and destroy her — this 
dastardly treason was made bloody by cowardly 
violence. The unarmed and the unsuspecting 
were shot down and stabbed in cold blood. Later, 
soldiers who came home from the front, wounded 
soldiers too, were persecuted and assaulted. The 
men of Ulster don't wish to fall under the power 
of the Green Irish. 

''We do not know whether the British states- 
men are right in asserting a connection between 
Irish revolutionary feeling and German propa- 
ganda. But in such a connection we should see 
no sign of a bad German policy." Thus wrote a 
Prussian deputy in Das Grossere Deutschland. 
That was over there. This was over here: — 

''The fraternal understanding which unites the 
Ancient Order of Hibernians and the German- 
American Alliance receives our unqualified en- 
dorsement. This unity of effort in all matters 
of a public nature intended to circumvent the 
efforts of England to secure an Anglo-American 
alliance have been productive of very successful 
results. The congratulations of those of us who 
live under the flag of the United States are ex- 



AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE 265 



tended to our German-American fellow citizens 
upon the conquests won by the fatherland, and we 
assure them of our unshaken confidence that the 
German Empire will crush England and aid in the 
liberation of Ireland, and be a real defender of 
small nations/' See the Boston Herald of July 
22, 1916. 

During oxir Civil War, in 1862, a resolution of 
sympathy with the South was stifled in Parlia- 
ment. 

On June 6, 1919, our Senate passed, with one 
dissenting voice, the following, offered by Senator 
Walsh, democrat, of Massachusetts : 

Resolved, that the Senate of the United States 
express its sympathy with the aspirations of the 
Irish people for a government of its own choice." 

What England would not do for the South in 
1862, we now do against England our ally, against 
Ulster, our friend in our Revolution, and in support 
of England's enemies, Sinn Fein and Germany. 

Ireland has less than 4,500,000 inhabitants; 
Ulster's share is about one third, and its Prot- 
estants outnumber its Catholics by more than 
three fourths. Besides such reprisals as they 
saw wrought upon wounded soldiers, they know 



266 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



that the Green Irish who insist that Ulster belong 
to their Republic, do so because they plan to make 
prosperous and thrifty Ulster their milch cow. 

Let every fair-minded American pause, then, 
before giving his sympathy to an independent 
Irish Republic on the principle of self-determina- 
tion, or out of gratitude to the Green Irish. Let 
him remember that it was the Orange Irish who 
helped us in our Revolution, and that the Orange 
Irish do not want an independent Irish Repub- 
lic. There will be none ; our interference merely 
makes Germany happy and possibly prolongs 
the existing chaos; but there will be none. Be- 
fore such loyal and thinking Catholics as the 
gentleman who said to me that word about 

spoiling the ship for a ha'penny worth of tar," 
and before a firm and coherent policy on Eng- 
land's part, Sinn Fein will fade like a poisonous 
mist. 



CHAPTER XVII 
PAINT 



I 

CHAPTER XVII 

PAINT ' 

Soldiers of ours — many soldiers, I am sorry 
to say — have come back from Coblenz and 
other places in the black spot, saying that they 
found the inhabitants of the black spot kind and 
agreeable. They give this reason for liking the 
Germans better than they do the English. They 
found the Germans agreeable, the English not 
agreeable. Well, this amounts to something as 
far as it goes : but how far does it go, and how 
much does it amount to? Have you ever seen 
an automobile painted up to look like new, and 
it broke down before it had run ten miles, and 
you found its insides were wrong? Would you 
buy an automobile on the strength of the paint? 
England often needs paint, but her insides are 
all right. If our soldiers look no deeper than 
the paint, if our voters look no further than the 
paint, if our democracy never looks at anything 
but the paint, God help our democracy! Of 

269 



270 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



course the Germans were agreeable to our soldiers 
after the armistice! 

Agreeable Germany! — who sank the Lasi- 
tania; who sank five thousand British merchant 
ships with the loss of fifteen thousand men, 
women, and children, all murdered at sea, without 
a chance for their lives ; who fired on boat-loads 
of the shipwrecked, who stood on her submarine 
and laughed at the drowning passengers of the 
torpedoed Falaha. 

Disagreeable England ! — who sank five hundred 
German ships without permitting a single life to 
be lost, who never fired a shot until provision had 
been made for the safety of passengers and crews. 

Agreeable Germany ! — who, as she retreated, 
poisoned wells and gassed the citizens from whose 
village she was running away ; who wrecked the 
churches and the homes of the helpless living, and 
bombed the tombs of the helpless dead; who 
wrenched families apart in the night, taking their 
boys to slavery and their girls to wholesale viola- 
tion, leaving the old people to wander in lone- 
liness and die ; who in her raids upon England 
slaughtered three hundred and forty-two women, 
and killed or injured seven hundred and fifty- 



PAINT 



271 I. 



seven children, and made in all a list of four 
thousand five hundred and sixty-eight, bombed 
by her airmen; whose trained nurses met our 
wounded and captured men at the railroad trains 
and held out cups of water for them to see, and 
then poured them on the ground or spat in them. 

Disagreeable England ! — whose colonies rushed 
to help her : Canada, who within eight weeks 
after war had been declared, came with a volun- 
tary army of thirty- three thousand men; who 
stood her ground against that first meeting with 
the poison gas and saved not only the day, but 
possibly the whole cause ; who by 1917 had sent 
over four hundred thousand men to help dis- 
agreeable England; who gave her wealth, her 
food, her substance; who poured every symbol 
of aid and love into disagreeable England's lap 
to help her beat agreeable Germany. Thus did 
all England's colonies offer and bring both them- 
selves and their resources, from the smallest to 
the greatest; little Newfoundland, whose regi- 
ment gave such heroic account of itself at Gallipoli ; 
Australia who came with her cruisers, and with 
also her armies to the West Front and in South 
Africa; New Zealand who came from the other 

/■ 



272 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



side of the world with men and money — three 
million pounds in gift, not loan, from one million 
people. And the Boers? The Boers, who latest 
of all, not twenty years before, had been at war 
with England, and conquered by her, and then 
by her had been given a Boer Government. What 
did the Boers do? In spite of the Kaiser's tele- 
gram of sympathy, in spite of his plans and his 
hopes, they too, like Canada and New Zealand 
and all the rest, sided of their own free will with 
disagreeable England against agreeable Germany, 
They first stamped out a German rebellion, in- 
stigated in their midst, and then these Boers left 
their farms, and came to England's aid, and 
drove German power from Southwest Africa. 
And do you remember the wire that came from 
India to London? ^'What orders from the 
King-Emperor for me and my men?" These 
were the words of the Maharajah of Rewa; and 
thus spoke the rest of India. The troops she 
sent captured Neuve Chapelle. From first to 
last they fought in many places for the Cause of 
England. 

What do words, or propaganda, what does 
anything count in the face of such facts as these? 



PAINT 



273 



Agreeable Germany I — who addresses her God, 
"Thou who dwellest high above the Cherubim, 
Seraphim and Zeppehn" — Parson Diedrich Vor- 
werck in his volume Hurrah and Hallelujah, 
Germany, who says, "It is better to let a hundred 
women and children belonging to the enemy die 
of hunger than to let a single German soldier 
suffer" — General von der Goltz in his Ten 
Iron Commandments of the German Soldier; 
Germany, whose soldier obeys those command- 
ments thus : "I am sending you a ring made out 
of a piece of shell. . . . During the battle of 
Budonviller I did away with four women and 
seven young girls in five minutes. The Captain 
had told me to shoot these French sows, but I 
preferred to run my bayonet through them'' — 
private Johann Wenger to his German sweet- 
heart, dated Peronne, March 16, 1915. Germany, 
whose newspaper the Cologne Volkszeitung de- 
plored the doings of her Kultur on land and sea 
thus: "Much as we detest it as human beings 
and as Christians, yet we exult in it as Germans.'' 

Agreeable Germany ! — whose Kaiser, if his fleet 
had been larger, would have taken us by the scruff 
of the neck. 



274 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



"Then Thou, Almighty One, send Thy lightnings! 
Let dwellings and cottages become ashes 
in the heat of fire. 
Let the people in hordes burn and drown 
with wife and child. 
May then" seed be trampled under our 
feet; 

May we kill great and small in the 
lust of joy. 
May we plunge our daggers into their 
bodies, 

May Poland reek in the glow of fire and 
ashes." 

That is another verse of Germany's hymn, hate 
for Poland; that is her way of taking people by 
the scruff of the neck; and that is what Senator 
Walsh's resolution of sympathy with Ireland, 
Germany's contemplated Hehgoland, imphes for 
the United States, if Germany's deferred day 
should come. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



THE WILL TO FRIENDSHIP — OR THE 
WILL TO HATE? 



i 



CHAPTER XVIII 



THE WILL TO FRIENDSHIP — OR THE WILL TO HATE ? 

Nations do not like each other. No plainer 
fact stares at us from the pages of history since 
the beginning. Are we to sit down under this 
forever? Why should we make no attempt to 
change this for the better in the pages of history 
that are yet to be written? Other evils have 
been made better. In this very war, the outcry 
against Germany has been because she deliber- 
ately brought back into war the cruelties and 
the horrors of more barbarous times, and with 
cold calculations of premeditated science made 
these horrors worse. Our recoil from this deed 
of hers and what it has brought upon the world 
is seen in our wish for a League of Nations. The 
thought of any more battles, trenches, sub- 
marines, air-raids, starvation, misery, is so un- 
bearable to our bruised and stricken minds, that 
we have put it into words whose import is, Let 

277 



278 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



US have no more of this! We have at least put 
it into words. That such words, that such a 
League, can now grow into something more than 
words, is the hope of many, the doubt of many, 
the behef of a few. It is the behef of Mr. Wilson ; 
of Mr. Taft; Lord Bryce; and of Lord Grey, 
a quiet Englishman, whose statesmanship during 
those last ten murky days of July, 1914, when he 
strove to avert the dreadful years that followed, 
will shine bright and permanent. We must not 
be chilled by the doubters. Especially is the 
scheme doubted in dear old Europe. Dear old 
Europe is so old ; we are so young ; we cause her 
to smile. Yet it is not such a contemptible thing 
to be young and innocent. Only, your innocence, 
while it makes you an idealist, must not blind 
you to the facts. Your idea must not rest upon 
sand. It must have a little rock to start with. 
The nearest rock in sight is friendship between 
England and ourselves. 

The will to friendship — or the will to hate? 
Which do you choose? Which do you think 
is the best foundation for the League of Nations? 
Do you imagine that so long as nations do not 
like each other, that mere words of good inten- 



THE WILL TO FRIENDSHIP 279 



tion, written on mere paper, are going to be 
enough? Write down the words by all means, 
but see to it that behind your words there shall 
exist actual good will. Discourage histories for 
children (and for grown-ups too) which breed 
international dislike. Such exist among us all. 
There is a recent one, written in England, that 
needs some changes. 

Should an Englishman say to me : 

'^I have the will to friendship. Is there any 
particular thing which I can do to help?" I 
should answer him : 

/'Just now, or in any days to come, should you 
be tempted to remind us that we did not protest 
against the martyrdom of Belgiiun, that we were 
a bit slow in coming into the war, — oh, don^t 
utter that reproach ! Go back to your own past ; 
look, for instance, at your guarantee to Denmark, 
at Lord John Russell's words : ^Her Majesty could 
not see with indifference a military occupation of 
Holstein ' — and then see what England shirked ; 
and read that scathing sentence spoken to her 
ambassador in Russia : ^ Then we may dismiss 
any idea that England will fight on a point of 
honor.' We had made you no such guarantee. 



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We were three thousand miles away — how far 
was Denmark? 

"And another thmg. On August 6, 1919, when 
Britain's thanks to her land and sea forces were 
moved in both houses of Parliament, the gentle- 
man who moved them in the House of Lords 
said something which, as it seems to me, adds 
nothing to the tribute he had already paid so 
eloquently. He had spoken of the greater in- 
centive to courage which the French and Belgians 
had, because their homes and soil were invaded, 
while England's soldiers had suffered no invasion 
of their island. They had not the stimulus of 
the knowledge that the frontier of their country 
had been violated, their homes broken up, their 
families enslaved, or worse. And then he added : 

have sometimes wondered in my own mind, 
though I have hardly dared confess the sentiment, 
whether the gallant troops of our AlHes would 
have fought with equal spirit and so long a time 
as they did, had they been engaged in the High- 
lands of Scotland or on the marches of the Welsh 
border.' Why express that wonder? Is there 
not here an instance of that needless overlooking 
of the feelings of others, by which, in times past, 



THE WILL TO FRIENDSHIP 281 



you have chilled those others? Look out for 
that." 

And should an American say to me : 
'^I have the will to friendship. What can I 
personally do?" I should say : 

'^Play fair! Look over our history from that 
Treaty of Paris in 1783, down through the Louisi- 
ana Purchase, the Monroe Doctrine, and Manila 
Bay; look at the facts. You will see that no 
matter how acrimoniously England has quarreled 
with us, these were always family scraps, in 
which she held out for her own interests just as 
we did for ours. But whenever the question 
lay between ourselves and Spain, or France, or 
Germany, or any foreign power, England stood 
with us against them. 

And another thing. Not all Americans boast, 
but we have a reputation for boasting. Our 
Secretary of the Navy gave our navy the 
whole credit for transporting our soldiers to 
Europe when England did more than half of it. 
At Annapolis there has been a poster, showing 
s. big American sailor with a doughboy on his 
back, and underneath the words, 'We put them 
across. ' A brigadier general has written a book 



282 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



entitled, How the Marines Saved Paris. Beside 
the marines there were some engineers. And how 
about M Company of the 23d regiment of the 
2d Division? It lost in one day at Chateau- 
Thierry all its men but seven. And did the 
general forget the 3d Division between Chateau- 
Thierry and Dormans? Don't be like that 
brigadier general, and don't be like that Ameri- 
can officer returning on the Lapland who told the 
British at his table he was glad to get home after 
cleaning up the mess which the British had made. 
Resemble as little as possible our present Secretary 
of the Navy. Avoid boasting. Our contribution 
to victory was quite enough without boasting. 
The head-master of one of our great schools has 
put it thus to his schoolboys who fought : Some 
people had to raise a hundred dollars. After 
struggUng for years they could only raise seventy- 
five. Then a man came along and furnished the 
remaining necessary twenty-five dollars. That is 
a good way to put it. What good would our 
twenty-five dollars have been, and where should 
we have been, if the other fellows hadn't raised 
the seventy-five dollars first ? " 



CHAPTER XIX 
LION AND CUB 



X 



CHAPTER XIX 



LION AND CUB 

My task is done. I have discussed with as 
much brevity as I could the three foundations of 
our ancient grudge against England : our school 
textbooks, our various controversies from the 
Revolution to the Alaskan boundary dispute, 
and certain differences in customs and manners. 
Some of our historians to whom I refer are them- 
selves affected by the ancient grudge. You will 
see this if you read them ; you will find the facts, 
which they give faithfully, and you will also find 
that they often (and I think unconsciously) 
color such facts as are to England's discredit and 
leave pale such as are to her credit, just as we 
remember the Alabama, and forget the Lan- 
cashire cotton-spinners. You cannot fail to find, 
unless your anti-Enghsh complex tilts your judg- 
ment incurably, that England has been to us, on 
the whole, very much more friendly than un- 
friendly — if not at the beginning, certainly at 

285 



286 



A STRAIGHT DEAL 



the end of each controversy. What an anti- 
English complex can do in the face of 1914, is 
hard to imagine : Canada, AustraUa, New Zea- 
land, India, the Boers, all Great Britain's colonies, 
coming across the world to pour their gold and 
their blood out for her ! She did not ask them ; 
she could not force them; of their own free will 
they did it. In the whole story of mankind such 
a splendid tribute of confidence and loyalty has 
never before been paid to any nation. 

In this many-peopled world England is our 
nearest relation. From Bonaparte to the Kaiser, 
never has she allowed any outsider to harm us. 
We are her cub. She has often clawed us, and 
we have clawed her in return. This will probably 
go on. Once earlier in these pages, I asked the 
reader not to misinterpret me, and now at the 
end I make the same request. I have not sought 
to persuade him that Great Britain is a charitable 
institution. What nation is, or could be, given 
the nature of man? Her good treatment of us 
has been to her own interest. She is wise, far- 
seeing, less of an opportunist in her statesman- 
ship than any other nation. She has seen clearly 
and ever more clearly that our good will was to 



LION AND CUB 



287 



her advantage. And beneath her wisdom, at 
the bottom of all, is her sense of our kinship 
through liberty defined and assured by law. 
If we were so far-seeing as she is, we also 
should know that her good will is equally im- 
portant to us : not alone for material reasons, 
or for the sake of our safety, but also for those 
few deep, ultimate ideals of law, hberty, Hfe, 
manhood and womanhood, which we share with 
her, which we got from her, because she is our 
nearest relation in this many-peopled world. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



